NEW THOUGHT 

Its Lights and Shadows 



JOHN BENJAMIN ANDERSON 




Class B P& 3C) 

Book - f\ "7 



Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



NEW THOUGHT 

ITS LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 

AN APPRECIATION 
AND A CRITICISM 



BY 

JOHN BENJAMIN ANDERSON 
Professor in Colgate University 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1911 






Copyright, 1911 
Sherman, French &* Company 



©CI.A292533 



^ 



TO 

MY MOTHER 



PREFACE 

Within recent years a new continent has arisen 
to take its place, perhaps for a long time to 
come, in the wide world of human thought and 
life. The enthusiastic inhabitants of this con- 
tinent call it New Thought, and to them it is 
their beloved Fatherland. 

It is no wonder that we are beginning to hear 
on every hand the question, "What is New 
Thought?" But any intelligent answer to the 
question is seldom heard. In fact, neither the 
Christian people nor their leaders realize the 
magnitude of the new movement, or the mo- 
mentum it has gained, or the inroads it will 
surely make into the Christian Church. 

Books and papers from the New Thought side 
are becoming very numerous. This book is an 
explanation of New Thought by a Christian. It 
is not for the professional philosopher but rather 
an elementary exposition for the people. This 
fact has partly determined the style, the avoid- 
ance of technical terms except when necessarily 
quoted from New Thought, the arrangement of 
the materials, and the intentional repetitions. 

This volume is not an attack upon New 
Thought. In looking back over his work the 
author finds expressions that sound rather po- 



PREFACE 

lemical. And to those who are unacquainted 
with New Thought books the pictures drawn in 
this volume will seem to be caricatures because so 
incredible. The author protests, however, that 
he has given a fair and faithful portrait of New 
Thought. The exposition is accompanied by 
such criticism of New Thought's main ideas and 
methods as seems likely to be most helpful to the 
readers the author has in mind. A comparison is 
also instituted between New Thought and Chris- 
tianity at those points where it is especially de- 
sirable for the reader to be well-informed. 

The book begins with the briefest historical 
sketch, followed by a presentation of the stu- 
pendous claims of New Thought. Then, before 
coming to the exposition of its teachings, New 
Thought is looked at as a whole from several 
different points of view. Then, beginning with 
Chapter IV, its most important ideas are exam- 
ined, and afterwards the practical applications 
of these ideas are considered. 

The reader, to whom some topics will be of 
especial interest, will find it not only desirable 
but quite necessary to read the chapters in the 
order in which they appear, since the later chap- 
ters presuppose for their full understanding a 
knowledge of the earlier expositions. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. History and Claims of New 

Thought 1 

II. General Survey 8 

III. Being and its Expression . . .15 

IV. Spirit and Mind 21 

V. The Two Minds 30 

VI. Relation of Spirit and Mind to 

Matter 37 

VII. The Body as Related to Mind and 

Spirit 46 

VIII. The Body as Related to Mind and 

Spirit (Continued) ... .55 
disease, accident, and surgery 
IX. Principles and Methods of Heal- 
ing 67 

X. Principles and Methods of Heal- 
ing (Continued) 76 

XI. Drugs, Hygiene, and Diet . . 83 
XII. Practical Defects in New 

Thought Therapeutics ... 88 



CONTENTS 
Chapter page 

XIII. Law 98 

XIV. Happiness .105 

XV. Good and Evil 118 

XVI. New Thought Ethics . . . 127 

XVII. New Thought and Religion . .137 

Appendix 147 



NEW THOUGHT 



CHAPTER I 

HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF NEW 
THOUGHT 

"New Thought" is a metaphysical and prac- 
tical movement that has arisen and spread far 
and wide during the last twenty-five or thirty 
years. It looks to no one man as its originator. 
Like Melchizedek, it has no recorded father or 
mother, and it expects to have, like him, no "end 
of life." It sprang into being spontaneously in 
different minds. It is a phase of the reaction 
that has set in recently toward a spiritual inter- 
pretation of life and toward a practical use of 
the occult powers of the soul. This reaction has 
manifested itself conspicuously in Christian 
Science and in New Thought and in the wide- 
spread interest in psychical research. 

New Thought, however, is not an isolated 
phenomenon. All large movements are rooted 
in the past and New Thought is no exception. 
It is a direct outgrowth from New England 
transcendentalism. Emerson is sometimes called 
"the Master." It also has been powerfully in- 
fluenced by Hindu philosophy, especially by the 
Yoga systems. New Thought received its first 
great impetus from P. P. Quimby of Portland, 
Me., and was later advanced by the practice of 



2 NEW THOUGHT 

mental healing by Julius A. Dresser of Boston 
and by the writings of Dr. W. F. Evans. 

The adherents of the movement are said to be 
numbered by the million, and are to be found 
not only in the United States but also in Canada, 
England, France, Germany and Italy. Its "cir- 
cles of healing" exist in most of the cities and 
in every State of the Union. New Thought 
literature is extensive and rapidly increasing and 
appears in every imaginable form. Some dis- 
ciples of New Thought are members of the Chris- 
tian Church while a multitude of Christians are 
more or less influenced by it. Yet there is 
almost universal ignorance among Christians 
and Christian ministers as to just what New 
Thought claims to be and to do. It is high 
time that the leaders of the Christian people 
bestir themselves and give serious attention to 
this new cult that is attaining large dimensions 
and proclaims itself to be the only true Chris- 
tianity. 

As an introduction to the whole subject, it 
may be well first of all to enumerate the claims 
of New Thought. 

New Thought claims to be a life, a philos- 
ophy, a system of healing, and the only power 
able to reform mankind and perfect the race 
physically, intellectually, and morally. 

It professes to be the finest symptom, the best 
expression, and the peerless leader of the spirit- 
ual tendencies of the twentieth century. It calls 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS S 

itself a great spiritual revival. It professes to 
be the only real Christianity and to do what 
Christianity was intended to do. 

In its Hall of Fame the name of Jesus has the 
most honored place. He is regarded as the 
wisest teacher and the greatest idealist the 
world has ever seen. Gautama Buddha, however, 
and even Emerson are almost as highly esteemed 
as teachers of the true wisdom and of the real 
life. 

New Thought poses as the herald of a new 
age, the final and golden age when ignorance, 
disease, sin, fear, suffering, sorrow, and death 
shall be no more and when knowledge, health, 
goodness, peace, happiness, and abounding life 
shall be the lot of every human being. "The 
night is far spent, the day is at hand." True, 
it may require centuries to reach the perfect 
state for all, many of us may have to pass 
through further incarnations, yet by the path of 
New Thought (which path all will sooner or 
later take) the shining goal must and shall be 
reached in due season. Meanwhile the golden 
age need not be deferred for any man, who can 
have it within himself for the seeking and ac- 
cepting even now. 

Those who are unacquainted with the New 
Thought literature little realize the Himalayan 
magnitude of its pretensions. It ushers in the 
last stage in the evolution of man. Up to the 
present most men have been cave dwellers. New 



4 NEW THOUGHT 

Thought will bring them out into the clear light 
of day and reveal reality to them and display 
to their wondering eyes the great and glorious 
world of "real" life with its far-reaching vistas, 
its towering mountain peaks, its peaceful val- 
leys, its broad sunlit plains, its majestic rivers, 
and the blue sky over-arching all. 

New Thought shatters all illusions ; it delivers 
from all delusions. It is the light of the world ; 
as compared with all other lights it is the very 
sun itself. It is the voice of Truth sounding in 
the unwilling ears of a crooked and perverse 
generation, "an unbelieving and faithless era." 
It is the true interpreter of the Bible, being the 
modern and occidental phrasing of the ancient 
and oriental Scriptures. It is the only true 
science and puts to blush "the vulgar herd of 
materialistic scientists" whose materialism made 
the nineteenth century "the darkest age of 
human history." 

New Thought is the secret of power. It gives 
to each man the complete mastery. It places 
a man's destiny in his own keeping. It awakens 
self-confidence, infuses courage, inspires hope. 
It opens body and mind to the inrushing tides 
of abounding, almighty life. It is the Procla- 
mation of Emancipation to every slave whether 
of evil habit or of ignorance or of heredity or 
of environment. It enables a man to quaff the 
wine of life with gladness and even with glee 
from any and all of the goblets of circumstance. 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS 5 

It banishes poverty and misery, shields from 
every harm or rather annihilates every harm, 
sweetens life, harmonizes all the world's dis- 
cords, gives the victory over trouble, disease, 
pain and death. In this world of restlessness, 
anxiety and trouble it is a paradise with hell all 
around. As a builder of good character it knows 
no equal. It crowns love king of the universe 
and is the champion of social service. It lives 
the only "real" life, a life simple, wholesome, 
large, symmetrical, independent, happy, satis- 
fying. 

In every respect New Thought claims to be 
the shining leader of the human race and is 
prodigal of promises of every imaginable good. 
Truly "the fruit is good to look upon and desir- 
able for food." Surely here is Pandora's own 
box. Here is the saturnalia of faith and hope. 
Such a decoy is sure to lure. In view of such a 
menu it is not surprising that great numbers 
sit down to this sumptuous banquet which has 
a fillip for the most jaded taste. A myriad of 
dazzled human moths flutter about this arc lamp 
and are singed or burned, some of them, indeed, 
being seriously injured. 

What should be the Christian's attitude to- 
ward these claims and those who make them? 
Shall we treat New Thought as mere ballooning 
with the latest newfangled gas-bag inflated with 
conceit and bombast? Shall we take the posi- 
tion of a friend of the present writer who said? 



6 NEW THOUGHT 

"It is curious how much ability has found its 
way into New Thought writers. The only ex- 
planation is that they have been given over to 
believe a lie that they may be damned?" Shall 
we regard New Thought as just one more toss- 
ing in humanity's fitful fever? The Christian 
and sensible attitude may be stated as follows : 
Whatever perishable "wood, hay, and stubble" 
there may be in New Thought, it certainly con- 
tains "gold, silver, and precious stones." What- 
ever of truth and profit there may be in it, we 
should be open-minded and earnest enough to 
discern it and receive it, receive it for ourselves 
individually, and for our churches, and for this 
weary, sinning, suffering world. We should re- 
member, too, that New Thought is the very 
bread of life to feed and water of life to refresh 
according to the view and experience of a mul- 
titude of sincere and self-respecting, though in 
some measure deluded, men and women who are 
aspiring to a life of peace and love and service. 
It would be easy enough to laugh at the crudi- 
ties, inconsistencies, absurdities, and pomposi- 
ties of New Thought or to direct the shafts of 
satire against the weak points in its armor. The 
more excellent way, however, is to seek to be 
judicial in temper, kindly in spirit, recognizing 
and welcoming all good ingredients while indi- 
cating and deprecating all elements of error 
and harm. Even if in loyalty to truth and to 
human welfare one must deal with the error with 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS 7 

an iron hand, nothing will be lost and much will 
be gained by wearing the silken glove. In deal- 
ing with New Thought this may prove to be "a 
counsel of perfection." It is certainly a hardy 
pledge for a critic of extravaganza perhaps un- 
surpassed in occidental history. Consequently 
the present writer may fall from grace now and 
then ; but fairness and courtesy and love are his 
standard. 



CHAPTER II 
GENERAL SURVEY 

However experienced and skilled a mariner 
one may be on the seven seas of philosophy, he 
would find it difficult to steer a true course among 
the islands and rocks and shoals of the un- 
charted waters of New Thought. It is difficult 
to understand exactly the New Thought teach- 
ings, to discern their mutual relations, and to 
estimate them at their true worth. In order 
to help the reader to begin betimes to get his 
bearings, it may be well to call attention to cer- 
tain broad, general features of the cult under 
review before we start on our voyage in waters 
sometimes sunlit, frequently enveloped in a lumi- 
nous haze, and too often thick with fog. 

In the first place, while the New Thought 
is a philosophy, it is also and chiefly a life. 
Its advocates lay great stress upon this fact. 
They call it "practical idealism," with emphasis 
upon both words. They hold forth an ideal of 
character, of conduct, and of mental and physi- 
cal health, and hold it forth not only to be be- 
lieved in and admired, but above all to be at- 
tained. What this ideal is we shall see later. 
Suffice it to say here that, however fantastical 
8 



GENERAL SURVEY 9 

and speculative New Thought may be, it is in- 
tensely practical in its aim. Its head may rake 
the clouds or even the stars, but its feet are on 
the earth. It appeals to actual character, con- 
duct, happiness, and health as convincing evi- 
dence of the truth of its ideas. 

In the second place, if one would see New 
Thought in true perspective and right propor- 
tions, he must recognize that it is not primarily 
or chiefly a system of bodily healing. It is a 
life, a life covering the entire range of human 
experience. In fact, bodily healing is only in- 
cidental ; hardly more than a by-product, though, 
of course, a by-product highly prized. The 
healing comes in the course of the living; the 
disease exists first in the mind and therefore is 
always cured in the invisible realm of the inner 
life before, sometimes long before, the bodily 
restoration appears. 

Further, some New Thoughtists expressly say 
and all of them at times imply that the healing 
of the body waits on the reform of the character, 
and is the bodily expression of moral goodness, 
the physical efflorescence of a right inward life. 
Like the Holy Grail, health, on the whole and 
in the long run, is only for the pure in heart. 

New Thought is therefore far more than a 
system of bodily healing. It is an ethic; it is 
an attempted reformation and spiritualization of 
human life in all phases of its being and of its 
activity. It sounds not one, nor two, nor sev- 



10 NEW THOUGHT 

eral notes, but strikes all the chords and sweeps 
the whole gamut of human life. 

In the third place, New Thought claims to 
be a philosophy. Though it is chiefly a life, 
yet the life is supposed to be founded upon 
ideas, or the ideas are the intellectual equivalent 
of the life. The votaries of the cult plume them- 
selves upon the "scientific" character of New 
Thought. "Science" is one of their favorite 
terms. By "science" they mean a body of ideas 
and facts viewed as related to and unified under 
universal law. This is just what New Thought 
claims to be, and to New Thought you must go 
for the pure milk of science. Of this subject 
more anon. 

This philosophy or science is esoteric. It is 
understood only by the initiated. Spiritual 
things are spiritually discerned. Criticism by 
an outsider, if not an impertinence, is fatuous 
and futile, like a blind man matching colors, or 
a deaf man discriminating tones, or a dead man 
discussing life. You must live New Thought in 
order to understand it. Spiritual perception 
and feeling are the open sesame to that which 
is forever barred to the intellect. Life has its 
all-penetrating X-rays, while the clear, dry light 
of mere intellect is arrested at the very surface 
and cannot shine into the heart of things. The 
critic dwells in the outer darkness. 

This philosophy, further, is unique. It is 
peerless and unapproachable. The light that 



GENERAL SURVEY 11 

shines in New Thought is incomparably superior 
in purity and brilliancy to that which shines in 
any Christian theology, or in Christian Science, 
or in Buddhism, while the light of so-called 
natural science and much of the teaching of 
psychology is darkness compared with its splen- 
did noonday. 

Other philosophies have been wrought out la- 
boriously by the intellectual moil and toil of men 
who lived on a lower plane than New Thought, 
and therefore contain much error along with 
some truth. Each system of philosophy has 
some truth or aspect of truth or valuable em- 
phasis peculiar to it, but New Thought is par 
excellence the true philosophy, and gathers into 
itself all these scattered beams and from its 
burning, glowing orb rays them forth upon man- 
kind. It is the truth as seen and tested by men 
who are "in tune with the Infinite" ; it is a philos- 
ophy intuited rather than reasoned out, revealed 
by the universal Spirit in New Thought prophets 
rather than reached by mental effort. New 
Thought is the sun-god Apollo in contrast with 
the earthborn giant Enceladus ; it is the angel 
standing in the sun in contrast with the evanes- 
cent, ever changing wraiths formed by the 
wreathing, curling mists arising from the soil of 
theology and philosophy and from the damp, 
chill lowlands of material science. 

New Thought belongs on the "subjective 
plane," the ordinary man, scientist, philosopher, 



12 NEW THOUGHT 

and theologian, and of course the critic of New 
Thought lives on the "objective plane." The 
subjective plane is the plane of reality. It is 
the real world and the plane of real experience. 
New Thought appeals to experience as the test of 
its ideas just as the scientist does, but it is 
occult experience. 

In the fourth place, the followers of New 
Thought are largely unorganized. They need 
not do homage for their intellectual estates to 
any lord of the doctrinal manor or other suze- 
rain as Christian Scientists must to Mrs. Eddy. 
They are instead bound together by the invisible 
ties of a common belief, sentiment, and practice. 
They think of themselves as leaven, salt, aroma, 
light ; not as a sect, a group separated from 
their fellow men by organization and by a rigid 
creed. The sectarian idea is repugnant to them ; 
it conflicts with their fundamental belief in the 
oneness of Being. Their principles, they feel, 
are like eagles of the upper air that are not 
to be cooped up in any denominational cage. 
The movement naturally has its leaders, the per- 
sons who can most effectively represent it by 
speech and by the printed page and by the 
practice of mental healing. 

After this preliminary and general survey we 
are now ready to examine New Thought more 
closely. We shall begin with its fundamental 
conceptions and afterwards deal with their prin- 
cipal applications. 



GENERAL SURVEY 13 

Let not the hopeful reader, however, in his 
innocence think that he is about to traverse the 
king's highway, broad, and level, and straight, 
and amply marked by guideposts. For we are 
about to enter a realm of such confusion that 
the benighted traveller sometimes gives himself 
up for lost. For him who looks for clear think- 
ing in New Thought, the critic is in honesty 
compelled to inscribe over its portal, "All hope 
abandon, ye who enter here." This is not said 
harshly as if in revenge for the New Thought 
assertion that the critic, being uninitiated, does 
not know what he is talking about. For New 
Thought utterances are too often vague, oracu- 
lar, one-sided, mutually contradictory, marked 
by unscientific looseness and couched in figurative 
language that dazzles and striking epigram that 
dazes until the bewildered hearer or reader 
hardly knows his own identity. Pyrotechnics is 
one of the specialties of New Thought. 

Moreover, New Thought is not homogeneous. 
If it were fashioned of a rib taken out of the side 
of some one philosophy, it might hope to be a 
self-consistent, intelligible system of thought, but 
it is constructed out of an assortment of ribs 
collected from several and differing philosophies. 
In fact it claims sometimes that it is not a sys- 
tem. Life cannot be compressed into a system. 
To systematize is to limit. New Thought il- 
lumines, not limits the vision of truth. There is 
truth in this impeachment of system, but after 



14 NEW THOUGHT 

all it is a dangerous attitude for seekers after 
truth to take. 

Again, there is no authoritative spokesman or 
standard, and there are many minor and some 
important differences of view among the New 
Thqught expositors. 

Under these circumstances it is difficult to do 
justice to the advocates of New Thought. In 
trying for the sake of clearness to define exactly 
that which is vague one may easily attribute to 
them that which they would instantly disclaim, 
and in showing the presuppositions and implica- 
tions and logical consequences of their state- 
ments, one seems to charge them with holding 
positions they never purposed holding, simply 
because they never perceived the logic of their 
positions. 

By all this it is not meant that the New 
Thought exponents do not make plain, unvar- 
nished statements in terms quite precise and un- 
mistakable ; for there are plenty of exact proposi- 
tions. The trouble is that in the next chapter 
or even in the next sentence one finds another 
statement just as exact which it puzzles a logical 
mind to mate with the preceding statement. 
New Thought is the Proteus among the philoso- 
phies, with the exception that, unlike "the old 
man of the sea," it does not always end by telling 
the truth. 

With this warning of the fog bell let us cau- 
tiously proceed and try to keep off the rocks. 



CHAPTER III 
BEING AND ITS EXPRESSION 

Being is spirit. But what is spirit? It is 
living and unconditioned and impersonal being 
possessed of infinite power and intelligence and 
love and perfection existing and acting under 
its own universal and invariable law. This, 
however, does not tell us what spirit, so to speak, 
consists of, what it is in its essence. A good 
deal of New Thought language, used vaguely 
and popularly, would fit in with the conception 
that spirit consists of ideas, feelings, and voli- 
tions, that is, of mental states, but on the whole 
it is certain that this is not held by New Thought- 
ists. In fact they offer no answer to the problem 
of the essence of Being. 

Only one being exists. There appear to be 
many beings, such as God, men, trees, rocks, but 
in reality there is only one being. The one and 
only being or thing is self-existent. It was not 
created or made; it never came into existence, 
for it always existed and always will exist. The 
only existence there is may be called by any one 
of many names, such as Being, the All, the All 
in One and One in All, the Eternal Wholeness, 
the Universal Spirit of Wholeness, the Infinite 

15 



16 NEW THOUGHT 

Whole, the Spirit, the Infinite, the Infinite Spirit, 
the Eternal, the Infinite Life, the Universal 
Spirit, the Universal Life, the Universal Power, 
the Universal Intelligence, the Universal Wis- 
dom, the One Intelligence, the Omnipotent Spirit, 
the Omnipresent Spirit, the Omniscient Spirit, 
the Oversoul, the All-Good, the Supreme Love, 
the Divinity, God, the Christ, the Father, the 
Heavenly Father, the real man, the subjective 
man, the eternal man, the universal man, the 
Higher Self. 

Now this is nothing but pantheism. It does 
not come within the scope of this book to discuss 
pantheism, and all that can be said here, there- 
fore, is that all the philosophical, ethical, and re- 
ligious objections to pantheism make front 
against the above teaching of New Thought. 
Some of these objections will be brought out in- 
cidentally in the course of later discussions. 

It is now to be especially observed that New 
Thought does not hold consistently to its pan- 
theism. However gallant it may profess to be 
in its devotion to the monism that declares that 
All is One and One is All, it repeatedly surren- 
ders its sword to the pluralism that declares that 
the All is not one but more than one. New 
Thought sits comfortably on its All-is-One dog- 
ma and trots along easily and blithely until it 
comes to a gap too wide for the leap, when with 
perfect nonchalance it slides out of the panthe- 
istic saddle, walks across a pluralistic foot- 



BEING AND ITS EXPRESSION 17 

bridge, vaults up on a pantheistic relay on the 
other side of the chasm, and then continues its 
pleasant canter along the beautiful Eternal 
Wholeness highway. 

New Thought, like its ally, Christian Science, 
is a vain endeavor to use two different philoso- 
phies between which there can be no more concord 
than between Christ and Belial. This is like at- 
tempting the impossible feat of living at the 
North and South Poles at one and the same 
time. To see this clearly at the very begin- 
ning will aid the reader greatly in threading 
his way through the mazes of New Thought. 
If there is any clue to the labyrinth, this is it. 
New Thought declares that there is only one 
being or thing in existence — this is monism ; New 
Thought, when nodding, declares or implies that 
there is more than one being or thing in exist- 
ence — this is pluralism. These two contradic- 
tory ideas are patched together in the crazy 
quilt of New Thought. So far as my observa- 
tion extends, it would be possible to take any 
New Thought book, sort its statements into two 
groups, and make of them two irreconcilable 
books, one monistic and the other pluralistic. 

New Thought's unfaithfulness to pantheism, 
appears the instant it proceeds beyond the bare 
affirmation of Being and its nature. Necessarily 
the next step in the exposition is the expression 
of the All-One and the relation of the All-One 
to its expression. This is the crucial point, 



18 NEW THOUGHT 

and just here New Thought is hopelessly en- 
tangled in the toils of inconsistency. 

Considering now the expression of the All-One 
we learn that Universal Life is lived on three 
"planes," the spiritual, the mental, and the 
physical. The spiritual plane is the "real 
home" of universal spirit. On that plane it 
lives an infinitely intelligent, powerful, loving 
life. For reasons unknown this infinite mode of 
existence does not suffice infinite spirit. It seeks 
a career on another and a limited plane and 
therefore exists as minds. But even this is not 
enough. It lives on a still lower plane, existing 
as matter. One and the same being, the univer- 
sal, only existent being, exists as spirit, as mind, 
as matter. Its existence in the material and 
mental modes is finite; its existence in the 
spirit mode is infinite. 1 

Universal spirit is one and indivisible ; minds 
are many, and matter is divisible. Nothing ex- 
ists except spirit, yet minds are not parts of 
it, neither is matter. A mind is an "expression" 
of spirit, so also is matter. Mind and matter 
are sometimes spoken of, not as the expression 
of spirit, but rather as the means of the ex- 
pression of spirit. 

i Spirit seems but seldom to be thought of as a mode 
of existence; yet "plane" is frequently used in connec- 
tion with spirit and spiritual. 

"Mind" is sometimes a synonym for universal spirit. 
This meaning of mind is not in view in the discussions 
of mind in this book. 



BEING AND ITS EXPRESSION 19 

Now when mind and matter are thought of as 
the means of expression, they are almost uncon- 
sciously thought of and spoken of as real things 
in themselves, other than spirit, subordinate (at 
least ideally) to spirit, created by spirit, and 
used by spirit, though so far as the mind is con- 
cerned, it is often a rebellious and unprofitable 
servant. New Thought literature is saturated 
with this dualistic view of spirit and mind, and 
of spirit and matter. 

When mind and matter, on the other hand, are 
thought of, not as the means of spirit's expres- 
sion, but as the expression itself, the conception 
seems closer to monism, although it is probably 
just as truly pluralism, only subtler or vaguer. 
This conception is that mind and matter are the 
manifestation of spirit, its appearance as men- 
tal and physical states and actions. Mind and 
matter are entities no more than light or heat 
or odor. 

As to matter, we may regard it as spirit it- 
self materially manifested, or the material mani- 
festation of spirit, or the means of the material 
manifestation of spirit. This has merit as a 
lively acrobatic performance but makes the be- 
holder dizzy. 

The relation of mind to spirit is analogous 
with the relation of matter to spirit. Be it ob- 
served just here that the view that the mental 
powers in exercise are nothing more nor less than 
infinite and perfect spirit in action on the so- 



20 NEW THOUGHT 

called mental plane raises the problem of moral 
evil to its highest pitch and leaves it unsolved or 
even unmitigated. While the view that the mind 
is the means by which infinite and perfect spirit 
expresses itself raises, not only the question as 
to how this instrument can exist if spirit is "the 
All," but also how mind can be so perverse and 
contrary in character to spirit when spirit is the 
All and the All is absolutely good. 

We have now reviewed in general the relation 
of mind and matter to spirit, and have noted 
that New Thought dallies with three discordant 
conceptions of this relation, namely, that mind 
and matter are spirit itself expressing itself, 
that they are the expression of spirit, and that 
they are the means of the expression of spirit. 
This modern Atalanta charmed by these three 
golden apples has lost the race and has been 
compelled into wedlock with Error. We shall 
now proceed in the next chapter to examine more 
minutely the relation of spirit to mind, and in 
a subsequent chapter the relation of spirit to 
matter. 



CHAPTER IV 
SPIRIT AND MIND 

Notwithstanding some confusion in the use of 
the terms spirit, soul, and mind by New Thought 
writers, it is fairly sure that in their view the 
immaterial man as distinguished from his body 
consists not of three elements or aspects but of 
two, namely, spirit and mind. "Soul" is some- 
times used for spirit and sometimes for mind. 
What then are spirit and mind and what are 
their relations to each other? 

In the first place, consider the New Thought 
ideas concerning spirit. 

At the beginning of the preceding chapter 
the New Thought teaching respecting the nature 
of spirit was set forth and need not be repeated. 
There is only one spirit existent. This spirit 
is God, if one pleases to use that name. 
This spirit is also man. But it is not what in 
our common speech is meant by a man, an 
individual man. It is incorrect to speak of 
human spirits, or to differentiate your spirit 
from my spirit. The one and only spirit 
is common to us all. The "real" man is univer- 
sal spirit. There is only one "real" man. The 
real man "in" you is identical with the real man 
in me. Notice that the teaching is not that the 
21 



22 NEW THOUGHT 

real man in you is akin to, or similar to, or of 
the same nature as, the real man in me, but the 
real man in you is absolutely identical with the 
real man in me. You and I and all of us are, 
on the spiritual plane, literally and without any 
qualification whatever one and the same being. 
This being is man, the real man, the eternal 
man. And just this is what is meant by the 
human spirit. This is also the divine spirit. 
The human spirit and the divine spirit are not 
two spirits but one, one spirit with these two 
names. There is only one spirit, and that spirit 
is universal and infinite and perfect. 

The human spirit, the one and only human 
spirit, is the Universal Spirit. But can any sane 
person have the hardihood to affirm that the 
human spirit is self-existent, unconditioned, om- 
niscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite, per- 
fect in love, unblemished in goodness, and has 
been all this from all eternity? Yes. The New 
Thoughtist will look you straight in the eye and 
talk to you about your infinitude of knowledge 
and power and perfection with the most unblush- 
ing assurance. You may flinch, but he never ! 
The human spirit is God. We shall see later 
what are the consequences for religion, ethics, 
and therapeutics of this position. 

And now what is the "mind" and what is its 
relation to spirit? One needs patience to follow 
through all the sinuosities of New Thought 
in this regard. The needle of the New 



SPIRIT AND MIND 23 

Thought compass plays some lively tricks, as 
if the bold ship were passing through a magnetic 
storm. 

Minds are usually spoken of in New Thought 
precisely as the ordinary man speaks of persons, 
that is, as beings possessing certain powers and 
things and sustaining a variety of relationships. 
A multitude of New Thought statements imply 
that the mind has intellect, feeling, and will, and 
exercises these powers of its own initiative, and 
is distinct from spirit on the one hand and from 
body and matter in general on the other. This 
is of course thorough-going pluralism. 

But while the implication very often is as just 
stated, namely, that a mind is a being and has 
powers of thought, feeling, and volition, yet it is 
also expressly declared that a mind is not a be- 
ing, something possessing and exercising powers. 
It is only the powers themselves or the activities 
themselves, and since thought, feeling, and voli- 
tion are immaterial in their nature, their source 
and user is the only immaterial being existent, 
in fact the only being existent, even universal 
spirit. Spirit alone is Being and actor; minds 
are its energizing. On the mental plane spirit 
works by thinking, feeling, and willing. This 
is just as thorough monism. 

This confusion as to the nature of what New 
Thought terms "mind" makes this quasi-philos- 
ophy a bog in which unhappily uninitiated mor- 
tals like ourselves become inextricably mired. It 



m NEW THOUGHT 

is the Slough of Despond out of which by some 
miracle or other the fainting pilgrim must be 
pulled (providing, of course, that he is logical) 
if he is ever to enter through the wicket gate to 
tread the path that leads to New Thought's 
Celestial City. 

Let us examine more narrowly the knotty 
problem as to what is the New Thought view 
concerning the relation of spirit to mind. When 
these somewhat haphazard writers and speakers 
happen to be thinking of their fundamental con- 
ception of spirit as "the All," they speak of 
mind as an individuation or mode of spirit, as 
the mental plane on which spirit works, as spirit 
itself expressing itself. Spirit alone is. Spirit 
is the universal man, impersonal man. Univer- 
sal, impersonal man, which is the only man, has 
myriad minds. These minds are not entities, 
things, beings, they are sets of faculties or 
powers. Each mind is a group of the powers 
of thinking, feeling, and willing. The one and 
only being, therefore, has innumerable intel- 
lects; that is, it is thinking weakly and power- 
fully, poorly and well, correctly and incorrectly 
at one and the same time. It alone was the 
thinker in Plato, and Aristotle, and Paul, and 
Kant; it alone has been the thinker in all the 
stupidest blockheads that ever lived. It alone is 
the thinker in all grades of mental activity now 
in process in this world. The universal spirit 
alone does the thinking of the critic of New 



SPIRIT AND MIND 25 

Thought! Let us be thankful for this crumb 
of comfort. 

Minds are what may be described as the uni- 
versal spirit's organs of individuality. New 
Thought has not a little to say about individu- 
ality. Individuality is one mode in which the 
universal life exists and acts. It is not the 
highest mode, and it is often implied and some- 
times declared that the individual mode of exist- 
ence will not last forever. By the law of evolu- 
tion all that is lower must some day be tran- 
scended and must cease. Individuality apper- 
tains only to the mental plane. We may speak 
of individuals only because we may speak of 
minds. 

Since minds are not beings, but only modes of 
being, individuals or persons are not beings, but 
only modes of the one being, the universal man 
or God. Consequently we may not speak of a 
man, or this man, or each man. There is only 
one man who lives and acts in countless indi- 
vidual modes. We may not even say a man 
is a spirit and has a mind. The strictly cor- 
rect formula is, Man is spirit and has minds. 
(It is almost superfluous to say that no adher- 
ence to strict formulas is to be found in New 
Thought authors.) Consistently with the above 
it is taught that universal spirit is alone the real 
man; for its particular individuation in any 
given mind is not a being, but only a mode of 
being. 



26 NEW THOUGHT 

The term "self" which stands for individuality 
is indeed applied to the "All-One" but usually 
with some qualifying word. The universal spirit 
is said to be the real, or inner, or innermost, or 
impersonal, or higher self. The individual mind 
by way of contrast is called the outer, or per- 
sonal, or lower self. The will of spirit is "im- 
personal will," while the will of the mind is the 
"personal will." This contrast between the 
higher, impersonal, universal self and the lower, 
personal, individual self is prominent and im- 
portant in New Thought ethics and therapeutics 
and offers opportunity for limitless confusion. 

Continuing our study of the relation of spirit 
to mind, we have seen that spirit is the universal, 
infinite, and solitary being, and that it is abso- 
lutely perfect in knowledge, power, ubiquity, 
and goodness. Whence, then, came all the limi- 
tations, ignorance, weakness, vice, malignity, and 
the whole hellish brood of loathsome, hideous, 
lamentable imperfections in human life? They 
all have their source solely in "minds." 

Is it any wonder that a man, holding such 
views as to the nature of spirit on the one hand 
and of the mind on the other, can hardly write 
a page without giving the impression that the 
mind is a genuine being distinct from spirit and 
in fact contrary to spirit ? This impression is 
inevitable for the careful thinker despite all pan- 
theistic assertions that minds are naught in them- 
selves but only the exercising of its powers by 



SPIRIT AND MIND 27 

the one and only being, the All, the Eternal 
Wholeness, the Universal Life. New Thought 
really makes man an amalgam of the infinite and 
the finite. 

Minds are endowed with the power of "open- 
ing" themselves to the spirit and of closing them- 
selves against the spirit. Their proper attitude 
is the receptive one. They should always be 
"negative" to the spirit, never "positive," that 
is, always open to receive the influence of the 
spirit, never positive in asserting themselves 
against it. The spirit is always impinging like 
an atmosphere or like the sunlight upon the 
mind, and is lovingly, patiently, wisely, and in 
strict accordance with law seeking continually 
to influence the mind. It never obtrudes or 
forces itself upon the mind. It woos the mind. 
The mind has a will of its own and responds or 
not, as it pleases. In proportion as the mind 
responds, it receives the inflowing of power, 
peace, joy, wisdom, goodness, and life from the 
infinite fullness of the "All-Good." 

This description shows that in the immaterial 
man are two distinct sets of powers, the powers 
of the spirit (which is "man") and the powers 
of the mind ; and that these powers are often and 
to some extent always arrayed on opposite sides. 
It is evident also that the powers of the spirit 
are what may properly be called intellect, feel- 
ing, and will. Now these are also manifestly 
the powers which the mind is represented as pos- 



- 



28 NEW THOUGHT 

sessing and as exercising in harmony with or in 
opposition to the spirit. 

To be consistent, therefore, we ought to say 
that a psychological analysis of any given man 
reveals two intellects, two emotional natures, and 
two wills. The intellect, feeling, and will of the 
one set are infinite, universal, impersonal, and 
perfect, while those of the other set are finite, 
individual, personal and exceedingly imperfect. 
This is carrying dualism into psychology with a 
vengeance; yet New Thought to be consistent 
with its fundamental tenet should be monistic. 

This dualism is its attempted solution of the 
problem of reconciling human imperfection with 
its monistic doctrine that all being is unquali- 
fiedly perfect. Duality is its answer to the ques- 
tions raised by its own doctrine of unity ; hetero- 
geneity is its proffered solution of the problem 
raised by its own dogma of homogeneity. New 
Thought is the attempted but impossible mar- 
riage of monism with pluralism. Monism can- 
not cleave to pluralism so that the twain will 
become "one flesh." 

In other words, the problem involved in the 
dogma that All is One and One is All is virtu- 
ally ignored, and the New Thought devotee tries 
to live in two different intellectual worlds at one 
and the same time. This is the case with its 
metaphysics and its psychology; we shall see 
later that it is also the fatal flaw in its thera- 
peutics and its ethics. New Thought's per- 



SPIRIT AND MIND 29 

petual oscillation between two radically different 
explanations of the universe, and without being 
aware of the oscillation, turns it into a fiasco. 
We could easily wink at many minor inconsist- 
encies but not such as this which wrecks the 
whole system. 



CHAPTER V 
THE TWO MINDS 

When, in addition to the confusion already de- 
scribed as characterizing the New Thought view 
of the relation of spirit to mind, we further note 
that "mind" means two minds, our obfuscation 
is almost complete. These two minds are the 
"conscious" and the "subconscious." New 
Thought here, as elsewhere, lays hold of 
familiar conceptions and grafts them into its 
own stem — if it has any stem of its own. It 
is to be expected that the independent oracles of 
the cult would differ from one another somewhat 
in their utterances respecting such a shadowy 
phenomenon as the subliminal self. Nor is it a 
marvel that any one of them should fail some- 
times to agree with himself in dealing with such 
a cryptic subject. The following is at least 
an honest endeavor to do justice to New Thought 
on the whole. 

The subconscious or unconscious or subjective 
mind is a personal and individual affair like the 
conscious mind and not universal and imper- 
sonal as is spirit. It is the sum total of all past 
experiences of conscious thinking, feeling, and 

30 



THE TWO MINDS 31 

willing. This sum total of past conscious ex- 
periences is not a heap or a medley, it is organ- 
ized and unitary. Moreover, it is not a museum 
but a menagerie, not a well-arranged collection 
of fossils, but of living things. For all our past 
thinking, feeling, and willing continues in opera- 
tion unceasingly though we are not conscious 
of it. The contents of our subconsciousness are 
always being increased during our waking hours, 
and every instant of fresh conscious life modifies 
the character of the subconscious mind by the 
inpouring of new elements. 

The conscious mind is thus the continuous cre- 
ator of its subconscious fellow. The quality of 
the latter is an exact blending of all the quali- 
ties of all the thoughts, feelings, and volitions 
a person has ever consciously experienced. 

The influence, however, is not all on one side. 
It is reciprocal. If it is true that the conscious 
creates the subconscious, it is just as true that 
present conscious life is considerably colored by 
the subconscious self. Indeed we meet in New 
Thought with sweeping statements on this point, 
even to the extent of affirming in substance that 
present thoughts and feelings and volitions are 
only the welling up into visibility of past thoughts 
and feelings and volitions from the subterranean 
lake of the subconscious self. No mental ex- 
perience is lost. It abides always and may at 
any moment be called up into consciousness again 
if the stimulus is of the right sort and degree. 



32 NEW THOUGHT 

The influence of the two minds upon each other 
is all under exact, invariable law. 

Leaving out of account the activities of our 
real self, that is, of universal spirit, we see that 
we are living a double mental life. Individuality 
is constituted not of one mind but of two. Each 
of these minds has its own distinctive work and 
method of work. They virtually are two per- 
sons, independent of each other in some respects, 
though intimately related. The two minds are 
in certain ways pronouncedly different in char- 
acter. 

The lower or subconscious mind has its own 
leading tendencies of thought, dominant emo- 
tional characteristics, and its own volitions. It 
is much slower to change its ways than is the 
upper, nimbler mind. It is a rank conservative, 
and one would suppose that it would often de- 
spise its own father (the conscious mind) when 
it sees him so quick to accept novelties and must 
in secret call him weather-cock, turncoat, change- 
ling, traitor, and other pretty names. 

The conscious mind, on the other hand, often 
feels that the subconscious mind is too slow, a 
drag on the chariot-wheels of progress, a dead- 
weight, a huge, massive, slow-moving leviathan 
down there in the deeps of the "lower self- 
hood." 

Consequently these two minds, creators of each 
other though they are, do not always get along 
well together. They are inseparably joined to 






THE TWO MINDS 33 

each other by the laws of the universe, but it is 
like yoking together the swift zebra and the 
slow-paced ox. 

Now the existence of this lower, lagging, oc- 
cult subconscious mind figures largely in New 
Thought and the conception powerfully influ- 
ences it as a system of ethics and of mental heal- 
ing. It is held that it is most important that 
the two minds should harmonize with each other, 
but that, as a matter of fact, they are always in 
some degree discordant. For example, the con- 
scious mind, being more active and intelligent, 
may accept the therapeutical principles of New 
Thought. Now since the body is the expression 
of the mind, why not by the power of conscious 
thought enter the promised land at once and be 
instantaneously and completely healed? Simply 
because the body is the expression of the sub- 
conscious mind as well as of the conscious. The 
subconscious Jordan rolls between the sufferer 
and Canaan, and not even the priests of New 
Thought can divide its waters and pass over 
dry-shod. 

It does not fall to the lot of this book to dis- 
cuss the existence and nature of the supposi- 
titious "subconscious" or "subjective" mind. 
But it is pertinent to point out certain things. 
First, it was stated in the last chapter that, if 
New Thought were true, correct psychological 
analysis of a human being would reveal in him 
at least two complete sets of mental faculties, 



34 NEW THOUGHT 

two intellects, and so forth. Abundant New 
Thought language concerning the subconscious 
mind, we may now state, involves the position 
that in each human being there are at least three 
complete sets of mental faculties, each set at odds 
with the other two ; and the problem of happi- 
ness, success, peace, joy, power, goodness is 
really to make these three potentates, spirit, con- 
scious mind, and subconscious mind into a har- 
monious triumvirate, acting in sweet and loving 
concord and cooperation. 

Secondly, in proportion as the teaching ap- 
proximates the idea that the subconscious is the 
sole source of the conscious it is inconsistent to 
say that the latter differs in character from the 
former. 

Thirdly, in proportion as the conscious mind 
is the source or creator of the subconscious mind 
the latter cannot be the source of the conscious 
mind. And in proportion as the subconscious 
mind is the source of the conscious mind the lat- 
ter cannot be the source of the subconscious 
mind. New Thought declares more or less ab- 
solutely that the conscious mind creates the sub- 
conscious and just as positively declares that 
the subconscious is the creator of the conscious. 
The reader has an uncomfortable feeling that 
the philosophy is squinting at him and he does 
not know which eye is looking at him. He feels, 
as so often in reading New Thought, that it is 
difficult here to divide the light from the dark- 



THE TWO MINDS 35 

ness and that he is much nearer to chaos than 
to cosmos. 

Fourthly, New Thought professes to be the 
supreme optimism. To it evolution is only prog- 
ress and evolution will work until perfection for 
all is attained. But it gives a highly important 
place to the subconscious mind. Its idea of the 
subconscious mind is that it is the sum of all 
past mental experiences, the evil as well as of 
the good. The evil, then, must last as long as 
the subconscious mind lasts. There is no room 
here for attaining perfection. All the conscious 
mind can hope to do is to change the balance of 
good and evil elements so that the good will in- 
creasingly preponderate. New Thoughtists evi- 
dently have never thought this matter through. 
Later on it will be shown how the New Thought 
adoption and use of the idea of the subconscious 
mind lands New Thought into inextricable dif- 
ficulties in ethics and therapeutics. 

Finally, if the subconscious or unconscious or 
subjective mind is a reality, it is at present only 
on the borderland of scientific knowledge, it is 
at the furthermost bound of human thought. 
It is a very dim region whose light is too dim to 
be called even twilight. New Thought speaks 
of the subconscious self and its nature, activi- 
ties, relation to conscious life and to the body, 
in the most confident fashion conceivable, and 
makes these "truths" play an important role in 
its practical ethics and therapeutics. Anyone 



36 NEW THOUGHT 

who has any respect at all for modern science is 
repelled by the positive assertions of New 
Thought in this little known realm and cannot 
bow submissively to a dogmatism that is dog- 
matic to the last degree. 



CHAPTER VI 

RELATION OF SPIRIT AND MIND TO 
MATTER 

We have seen that the New Thought concep- 
tion of the relation of spirit to mind is badly 
blurred. Does it have any self-consistent view 
as to the relation of spirit to matter? 

If there is only one being and it is spirit, then 
what is matter? Can we say at all that mat- 
ter is t Easily enough, if we identify it with 
spirit. And this is one representation of the case. 
"Everything in the universe is God" is flatly 
affirmed, and God is the universal spirit. The 
spiritual and the material are identical, the same 
thing under two names, viewed in two aspects, 
existing on two different planes. This position 
is of course consistent with the central idea of 
New Thought that the universal spirit is "the 
All." 

New Thought, however, does not stop here. 
It holds that matter is an expression of spirit, 
or of being. But matter cannot be at once the 
expression of spirit and spirit itself. 

Turning the kaleidoscope again we get an- 
other combination. Matter this time is not be- 
ing, or the expression of being, but the means 
87 



38 NEW THOUGHT 

of the expression of being. Closely allied to this 
third view of matter is the conception that mat- 
ter is the tool or instrument or even abode of 
spirit. In countless sentences matter is spoken 
of as if it were a real thing in and of itself, 
a thing having its own distinctive essence and 
properties and functions, a thing different from 
spirit, created and fashioned and controlled and 
used by spirit. Such language shows that for 
the time being the writer or speaker has taken a 
flying leap out of monism and landed squarely 
in pluralism. The truth is that New Thought 
is a double-barrelled philosophy that goes off now 
through one barrel and now through the other 
and again through both together. A double- 
barrelled philosophy, however, is hopelessly dis- 
credited as a philosophy. 

The relation of our bodily matter to spirit 
and mind will be expounded in a later chapter. 
We shall consider here the relation only of mat- 
ter in general to spirit. Matter is related to 
spirit directly and indirectly. 

In the first place, matter is related directly 
to spirit, universal spirit. It is the creation and 
manifestation and instrument of spirit. Spirit, 
remember, is one, and is human. No distinction, 
indeed, should be made between human and divine,, 
for man is God; man and God are merely two 
names for one thing, two names for the universal 
spirit. This neck-or-nothing philosophy does not 
hesitate to declare that your real self is the 



SPIRIT, MIND AND MATTER 39 

creator of the material universe and the absolute 
master of it. 

This mastery of the spirit over the material 
universe is exercised in complete accordance with 
law. For the universal spirit lives in perfect 
harmony with law and its material universe is 
completely under law. Since spirit is the "All- 
Good," the material universe is good and the 
laws of its operation are good. And since spirit 
is "the All," it should logically follow that evil, 
in the sense of physical disorder, abnormality, 
perversion, is impossible. But notwithstanding 
isolated statements to this effect, it is frequently 
taught that there is a great deal of mischief 
going on in the sphere of matter. Attention 
will be called to this point again in other con- 
nections. 

The term "forces of nature" is often employed. 
"Nature" seems to be the equivalent of universal 
spirit when the latter is viewed as related to the 
material universe. The term "forces of nature," 
as used in New Thought, is one of several in- 
stances of unassimilated importations from alien 
sources. It is not bone of its bone and flesh of 
its flesh. These forces are beneficent and wise. 
Evolution is their method. They invariably 
tend toward the developing and perfecting of 
material forms and toward their finest possible 
adjustment to one another. Evolution is a star 
of the first magnitude in the New Thought firma- 
ment. Further, its particular brand of evolution 



40 NEW THOUGHT 

admits of no retrograde movement whatsoever. 
Nothing appears unless required for progress. 
There is no atavism, no backward swirl of the 
current. Anything that seems to be degenera- 
tion is only a hidden preparation for onward 
movement ; it is itself virtually onward move- 
ment. 

In the second place, spirit is not only in direct 
relation to matter, controlling and mastering it 
by immediate touch, it deals with it also indi- 
rectly through minds. In the case of Jesus this 
indirect mastery through a mind was perhaps 
complete. All his miracles are accepted as his- 
torical and are cited as evidence of the truth of 
New Thought. He, however, possessed no power 
that is not latent in us all. The real man in 
him is identical with the real man in us. That 
real man is the omnipotent spirit, the creator 
and perfect master of matter. We too could 
walk on the water or multiply loaves and fishes 
or raise the dead, if we, as minds, were as open 
to the universal spirit as he was. 

By the method of New Thought this power 
over matter can be cultivated. The omnipotent 
spirit can gain increasingly powerful control 
over matter indirectly through our minds — that 
is, if our minds will let it. And our minds will 
let the omnipotent spirit have its way sooner or 
later. Even the intractable mind is under the 
law of evolution. Like a stream in a canyon 
which fumes and frets and foams but is forced 



SPIRIT, MIND AND MATTER 41 

onward by the pressure from behind and by the 
unyielding side-walls of rock, so the mind is mov- 
ing onward toward its destined goal of perfect 
harmony with spirit notwithstanding all its seem- 
ing irregularities and wilful tossings and wild re- 
bellions against universal law. (Nevertheless the 
rebellion is regarded as a present fact and this 
fact shows that the mind is not under the law of 
evolution as New Thought conceives of evolu- 
tion.) 

The destiny of each man without exception is 
complete mastery over matter. Ultimately we 
all shall be able to summon the invisible material 
atoms to take shape in such forms as we desire 
to appear. By the sheer power of thought or 
will we shall be able thus to create material 
forms and also to dissolve them into their com- 
ponent particles. Most of us, doubtless, will not 
have reached this degree of mastery over matter 
until we have passed through many more incar- 
nations. We must climb the ladder rung by 
rung, and every rung is a life lived in a body. 
When at last this power is attained, death itself 
will be mastered, for a man will be able to dis- 
solve and recombine his body at will. Of course, 
it should be remembered that the omnipotent 
spirit gains this complete power over matter in- 
directly through minds only in conformity to 
universal law, and the power once gained will not 
be exercised capriciously but in accordance with 
the law of the universe. All New Thought 



42 NEW THOUGHT 

writers are not sponsors for this stupendous con- 
clusion. It is a conclusion, however, which is 
not incongruous with the premises they all alike 
advocate. 

Closely connected with the circle of ideas just 
described is the "law of attraction." The 
homely old proverb is, "Birds of a feather flock 
together." New Thought makes a "scientific" 
application of this maxim. By the power of 
thought we create our environment. This prop- 
osition is repeatedly stated without any qualifica- 
tion. Our material environment is expressly 
said to be our own creation. The modus oper- 
andi is as follows : Each thought is a force. 
This thought-force emanates from your mind into 
the atmosphere, and lives and works incessantly. 
It draws to itself or to its thinker (some con- 
fusion here) that which is like unto itself. It 
cannot help doing so, for both this thought- 
force and its affinities are under the invariable 
and inescapable law of attraction. Thoughts, 
then, are magnets, and the things you desire are 
the steel filings drawn to the magnet. Thoughts 
are often spoken of in a grossly materialistic 
fashion, just as if they were things, and floated 
off from the mind into the circumambient air 
and went sailing and searching through the world 
to find their affinities and draw them to the 
thinker. 

In harmony with this conception, think opu- 
lence and you will become opulent. If out of 



SPIRIT, MIND AND MATTER 43 

employment, think you are getting a position 
and the thought will get you the position. 
Think thoughts of business success and success 
is sure. 

Other and saner New Thought writers dilute 
this invariable and unerring law of attraction 
so that it means: If you wish success in any 
enterprise, center your thought upon the enter- 
prise. If you do this, you will be more alert to 
observe and seize any opportunity or any means 
tending toward the desired end. Concentration 
of thought, desire, will, plan, effort brings suc- 
cess. A man who is bent on accomplishing some- 
thing will get in touch with persons, things, 
sources of information, openings, and so forth, 
which the man would not get in touch with if he 
were indifferent, careless, inattentive, and neither 
thought or wished anything steadily and in- 
tensely. To this common sense position anyone 
would subscribe with the qualification, however, 
that many men who do their best nevertheless 
fail in business. Even this contingency is oc- 
casionally recognized as possible by some New 
Thought teachers, who proceed to make what 
place they can for it in their moralizings. 

The New Thought method of gaining material 
things is explained by its advocates from another 
standpoint, altogether distinct from that of the 
law of attraction. It is an absolutely exact and 
invariable law that the inner expresses itself by 
the outer. A thought or a wish or a volition 



44 NEW THOUGHT 

is invisible. It is bound to become visible. It 
cannot help having concrete expression. 
Thoughts of poverty necessarily become exter- 
nalized in actual poverty. Imaginings of 
wealth must result in the possession of wealth. 
Castles in the air of necessity become castles on 
the ground. We are all creators, and we create 
the conditions under which we live. We are un- 
qualifiedly the architects of our own fortunes. 

It is not surprising that New Thought insists 
emphatically on "faith" as essential to success. 
A man needs to have egregious confidence and 
credulity also thus to fly in the face of experi- 
ence. It is no wonder too that New Thought 
has its full share of backsliders, when such mas- 
tery over gold and silver and material conditions 
is proclaimed as scientific, infallible, and there- 
fore realizable. 

It is strange that the New Thoughtist does 
not perceive that the law of correspondence be- 
tween inner and outer is a two-edged sword that 
cuts both ways. Mine are not the only thoughts 
and desires in this human world. The desires of 
two men may clash. In that case whose "inner" 
will find expression in the "outer." What is to 
prevent my business rival from ruining me sim- 
ply by thinking my ruin ? It is evident that I am 
not the only one to determine what my bank- 
account shall be or what shall be the material 
conditions of my life. "Too many cooks spoil 
the broth" is an old adage and a true one. The 



SPIRIT, MIND AND MATTER 45 

difficulty is there are too many "creators" work- 
ing on the same job and too great a chance of 
their coming to blows. 

Notwithstanding this just criticism, the incul- 
cation of these ideas about attraction and expres- 
sion has been of untold value to many followers 
of New Thought. This emphasis upon the inner 
life is wholesome, and there is a solid core of 
truth in the so-called law of attraction. The re- 
ception of these ideas tends to the development 
of the power of concentration and of applica- 
tion; belief in them leads a man to gird up the 
loins of his mind and run an unfaltering race 
and focus his powers steadily upon the accom- 
plishment of his purposes. So far forth New 
Thought, even by a whimsical insistence upon 
these notions, may do a man a royal service. 
But, as in other respects, so in this case New 
Thought is top-heavy with its tapering masts 
and enormous bellied sails counterbalanced by 
little ballast within its hull or by little metal on 
its keel. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BODY AS RELATED TO MIND 
AND SPIRIT 

New Thought teaches that the human body is 
directly related to universal spirit, to conscious 
mind, and to the subconscious mind. How New 
Thought coordinates these three relations is a 
baffling riddle. And when the "forces of Na- 
ture" and "invariable law" and "evolution" and 
sundry other ingredients are all thrown into this 
witches' caldron we have a wondrous mixture. 

Spirit lives on several "planes," one of which 
is the physical plane. Physical life is a mode 
of the universal life. The physical powers are 
the forces of nature. By "forces of nature" is 
probably meant forces of spirit that create and 
animate nature. (If "spirit" is "the All," 
what is "Nature?") The forces of spirit, when 
unobstructed, maintain perfect bodily health. 
When they are obstructed and therefore una- 
able to preserve health, they nevertheless are 
able to rush in as recuperative powers, and 
by the laws of the universe always do 
this. They are unceasingly at work seeking 
to strengthen and invigorate and perfect 
the body. This is necessarily the case, for 
spirit is good and seeks to impart only that 

46 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 47 

which is good and, acting in accordance with 
invariable law, always seeks to impart good as 
invariably and exactly as water seeks its level 
or as the elastic air adjusts itself with scientific 
exactness to the changing position of a moving 
object. Spirit, then, is the All; it expresses it- 
self on the physical plane ; the body is its expres- 
sion, or is one mode of its existence; spirit 
works on the body by means of "the forces of 
nature" for the preservation and restoration of 
health. Perfect and omnipotent spirit ought, 
one would think, to have its own way with body 
which is its own mode of being, its own expres- 
sion ; but the fact is otherwise. Alas ! there is 
a skeleton in the closet; and a very grim and 
potent skeleton it is. 

Exit spirit. Enter mind. "The mind" (which 
of the two minds?) creates, moulds, and controls 
the body. It can help or hinder bodily func- 
tions at will. The conscious mind, through its 
thoughts, emotions, and volitions has a tremen- 
dous influence over the body. Again, the sub- 
conscious mind has such complete control of the 
body that the physical organism in its every fiber, 
blood drop, cell, and atom responds automati- 
cally and precisely to the mental occurrences in 
this nether mind. There is an absolutely exact 
correspondence between the subconscious mind 
and the body. The two are exact duplicates, 
except that the former is on the mental plane 
while the latter is on the physical plane. 



48 NEW THOUGHT 

Does the reader understand how the conscious 
mind can have any influence over the body if 
the subconsciousness is thus related to the body? 
It is conceivable that the conscious mind might 
influence the body indirectly by modifying the 
subconscious mind as explained in an earlier 
chapter. But while New Thought teaches this, 
it goes beyond this and affirms a direct power of 
consciousness over bodily life. At this point 
in our journey night overtakes us again. 
Happy the New Thoughtist upon whom the sun- 
light of knowledge and understanding always 
shines. 

Let us probe a little deeper into this concep- 
tion of the relation of the body to the two minds. 
The body, we are told, is an exact copy of the 
mind. This statement seems innocent but mis- 
chief lurks in it. For there are two widely dif- 
ferent minds, the conscious and the subconscious. 
Of which mind is the body a copy, an exact copy ? 
It cannot possibly, at least to the unenlight- 
ened, be an exact copy of two diverse things at 
one and the same time. 

Here is the rub. The conscious mind does not 
set the pace for its subconscious mate. The 
latter is the receptacle for all the past experi- 
ences of the conscious mind, many of which the 
latter would gladly forget or repudiate. The 
subconscious mind, on the other hand, unblush- 
ingly includes as living active forces within it- 
self all the lies, impurities, meannesses, and all 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 49 

things bad of which the conscious mind has ever 
been guilty and of which now it may be heartily 
ashamed. There is nowhere in the universe such 
a foul nest of vile, loathsome, horrid things as 
live forever in the subconsciousness of many men, 
men whose conscious minds may now be penitent 
and pure and loving. The subconscious mind is 
an old reprobate whose main tendencies and ideas 
and emotions and purposes are changed by the 
conscious mind with exceeding slowness. In 
countless instances the conscious mind is like 
Plato's white horse striving upward, while the 
subconscious mind is the dark horse dragging 
the chariot downward. 

Now, of which mind is the body a copy ? New 
Thought clearly gives the palm, in this connec- 
tion, to the subconscious mind; for every mental 
movement that takes place in it is immediately 
and exactly registered in the bodily organism. 
Some go so far as to say that each atom of the 
body (what is a bodily "atom"?) is or contains 
an individual intelligence and that the subcon- 
scious mind includes all these intelligencies and 
that therefore it may truly be described as in- 
woven in all our physical tissues and materials. 
And yet the conscious mind, according to New 
Thought, exerts a mighty influence over the 
body. But does it wield this power directly 
upon the body or indirectly through the agency 
of the subconscious self? Some statements point 
one way and other statements the other way. 



50 NEW THOUGHT 

This matter is shrouded in obscurity by the haze 
that envelops New Thought, and no decisive an- 
swer is to be expected. 

Again, if the body is thus without qualifi- 
cation or exception under the complete dominion 
of the mind, and if the mind is often antagonis- 
tic to spirit hilt to hilt, how can spirit sustain 
any relation to body at all? and how can it in- 
fluence the body so powerfully? and still more, 
how can the body be the manifestation and mode 
of spirit, yea, spirit itself expressing itself on 
the physical plane? Did the patient reader ever 
sail into a thicker fog bank than this? 

The light of the sun being shut out, does not 
New Thought supply us with chart and com- 
pass? Let us look. Different explanations are 
offered as to the relation of spirit to mind within 
the sphere of bodily life. The mind is only the 
instrument of spirit by which spirit acts on body. 
If this is true, then body is only in a secondary 
sense and indirectly an expression or mode of 
spirit. Moreover, upon this hypothesis, the in- 
fluence of mind upon body is really the influence 
of spirit upon body. How, then, can the spirit 
and its forces be arrayed against the mind and 
its mischievous doings? For if mind is mere 
instrument, then spirit is the only actor. 

Again, a second view is that mind opens the 
portals of the bodily organism to the mighty 
spirit or shuts the door in its face. Mind is the 
lockkeeper that opens and closes and adjusts at 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 51 

will the sluice ga,tes of the physical life to admit 
or to exclude the inrushing tide of recuperative 
influence from the ocean of spirit. The energy 
all belongs to spirit, but it is the regal prerog- 
ative of the mind to direct that energy and to 
use it or misuse it. 

If the mind can do all this, it is no mere in- 
strument of spirit. Again, if the mind does this 
particular thing, then it is not the real creator 
and fashioner of the body. It is a real actor but 
it acts only as a middleman or agent, and an 
agent whose will is quite distinct from that of 
its employer ; yet an agent, not an instrument. 

From this second view we pass to a third. 
Spirit and mind positively contend with each 
other in the arena of the bodily life. The ig- 
norant or the perverted and wilful mind injures 
the body, and the spirit, being beneficent, rushes 
in with the forces of nature to repair the damage 
and oppose further injurious action on the part 
of the mind. Spirit does this of its own initia- 
tive because of its own perfect nature which im- 
pels it to promote perfection everywhere. Spirit 
loves the mind, too, though the latter is stupid 
and bad. By the same painful operation that 
heals the body spirit chastises and disciplines 
the mind and seeks to mend its manners and its 
disposition. How does this agree with either the 
instrument theory or the lockkeeper theory of 
the relation of spirit to mind? 

It is beyond question that New Thought of- 



52 NEW THOUGHT 

ten represents a positive opposition between 
spirit and mind in the sphere of the bodily life; 
and on the part of the mind this opposition often 
amounts to malign hostility to spirit. Yet mind 
is but an expression or mode of spirit or it is 
spirit itself manifesting itself on the mental 
plane! It is patent that New Thought escapes 
here from the attraction of its monistic lode- 
stone. Such pluralism is at sword's point with 
the fundamental notions that All is One and that 
spirit is the All. 

To the outsider this looks like civil war; the 
insurrection of the mind against monism, the 
crowned king of New Thought, is the great 
Rebellion. It seems to the uninitiated like a 
counsel of desperation or a forlorn hope when, 
in order to escape from the dilemma, the New 
Thoughtist begins to throw dust in your eyes 
by discoursing upon the mind as only the "par- 
tial" expression of the perfect spirit. 

Another important question needs considera- 
tion. If the body is the physical expression of 
"the mind," how can the bod}' in turn influence 
the mind? If the body is the creation of the 
mind, and the result of a continuous process of 
creation; if it is only the externalization of the 
mind, created, so to speak, in its image and 
after its likeness ; if it exactly tallies with the 
mind, corresponding to it in the minutest de- 
tails ; if the body is the same thing on "the 
physical plane" that the mind is on "the mental 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 53 

plane"; if it automatically registers every mo- 
tion and state of the mind, then how can 
it be true that the body influences the mind at 
all? 

But does New Thought affirm that the body in- 
fluences the mind? Assuredly. True, it is de- 
clared that the body is always and completely 
passive; that it is as "clay in the hands of the 
potter"; that it "never acts but is always acted 
upon." And this is just what the New Thought- 
ist ought to say if he would be self-consistent. 
But consistency is not New Thought's jewel. 
In its realm Jove does not merely nod ; he is 
sound asleep most of the time. The body is 
said to "tyrannize" over the mind. It can 
almost "enslave" the mind. It offers re- 
sistance to the mind. This resistance will some 
day, though perhaps not until some distant 
period in some future incarnation, be fully 
overcome and mind will be completely the 
actual master; but not yet, not now. But 
how can the body resist the mind in the slightest 
measure or in any way influence the mind for 
good or ill if the regulative New Thought ideas 
are true? The mystery here is forty fathoms 
deep. 

It should be evident that in the sphere of the 
relation of body to mind and spirit New 
Thought has lost its way altogether. No pole- 
star is discoverable. On this subject New 
Thought's beautiful poetic prose proves to be 



54 



NEW THOUGHT 



a pretty jargon, a "darkening of counsel by 
words without knowledge." 

Evidently a man should not read New Thought 
books unless he is uncommonly hospitable to 
ideas, so much so that he can entertain at one 
and the same time and without embarrassment 
guests that are irreconcilable to one another. 

New Thought's mental healing is professedly 
based on ideas reviewed in this chapter. Surely 
one needs to be a born adventurer to burn his 
bridges behind him and cross the Rubicon that 
divides New Thought from common sense, espe- 
cially if the health and life of those dearest to 
him is staked on the issue. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BODY AS RELATED TO MIND 
AND SPIRIT 

(Continued) 
DISEASE, ACCIDENT AND SURGERY 

What is disease according to New Thought? 
It is physical disorder, absence of harmony, a 
result of the violation of law. As disorder, it 
is the externalization of mental disorder. As 
always, the mind is the mischief-maker. In any 
£*iven case of disease the mind is or has been, 
perhaps years ago, perhaps aeons ago in some 
former incarnation, a violator of law. Violation 
of law is either ignorant or wilful. It may con- 
sist in the misuse of the body, or in the thinking 
of incorrect thoughts, or in the cherishing of 
wrong emotions as, for example, malice or envy 
or pride, or in the willing of that which is evil. 
By universal, inescapable law the internal must 
find expression in external conditions. The 
mind is the internal, the body is the external 
that corresponds to it and expresses it. (Be it 
observed in passing that this view regards body 
as the expression of mind, not of spirit.) Men- 
tal disorder becomes externalized in the shape of 
55 



56 NEW THOUGHT 

bodily disorder. There is and can be no bodily 
disorder or disease unless there is first mental 
lack of conformity to law. The external is only 
the expression of the internal. Externalization 
is possible only when there is something internal 
to be externalized. Therefore, no mental dis- 
order, no physical disorder. The physical, 
moreover, matches the mental with scientific pre- 
cision. In fact, the body is so related to the 
mind that the latter's disorder is externalized in 
the body inevitably, precisely, automatically. 
Disease is Nemesis and always demands the exact 
pound of flesh, no less, no more. 

Again, disease is often regarded in New 
Thought, not as disorder, but rather as the symp- 
tom of disorder. This is a radically different 
view. In the former view that disease is the 
bodily expression or externalization of mental 
disorder, disease emanates from the mind. It is 
only a physical duplicate of a mental state. It 
is the visible, automatic registering by means of 
flesh and blood of the events taking place in the 
mind. But this second view is very different. 
As a symptom of physical disorder, disease 
comes not from the mind but from the uni- 
versal spirit. Typhoid fever, for instance, 
is produced by spirit. (New Thought laughs 
"germs," "microbes," "bacteria" out of 
court.) It is the effort of the universal, lov- 
ing spirit to bless the body. Mind has pro- 
duced disorder in the body. Spirit now comes 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 57 

to restore order and repair the damage. The 
fever is the result of the inrush of the spirit's 
recuperative power; it is the energizing of the 
beneficent forces of nature. Consequently fever, 
pain, sleeplessness and so forth are to be wel- 
comed ; they are to be "loved" ; they are to be 
"harmonized with" or "vibrated with." In vi- 
brating with delirium tremens you are vibrating 
with good spirit. Only the unenlightened would 
think so evilly of delirium tremens as to call it 
"the horrors." True, it seems to be an enemy, 
but it is really a friend, and if you do not resist 
it or start back in affright from it, it will prove 
a friend indeed. 

These two views of disease are not compounded 
of the same clay. It is hardly necessary to 
point out the obvious fact that if all bodily con- 
ditions are the exact expression of the mind, they 
cannot be the result of the spirit's working upon 
the body and in so doing acting against mind; 
acting to recover the body from injuries in- 
flicted upon it by the mind. In the one case, dis- 
ease is disorder, in the other case it is the result 
of the spirit's endeavor to banish disorder. In 
the one case it is not to be welcomed ; in the other 
case it is to be welcomed, loved, "vibrated with." 

The waning light grows dimmer still when we 
are informed that disease never comes unless the 
mind "invites" it. This invitation may be ex- 
tended by the conscious mind or by the sub- 
conscious mind. It may be a recent invitation 



58 NEW THOUGHT 

or one given a quarter of a century ago or one 
given during a preceding incarnation a thou- 
sand years ago. An invitation once given can 
never be withdrawn and must be accepted. This 
is law and it is law which cannot be broken, not 
even by that expert criminal called the mind. 

All disease is invited. It all has a mental 
origin. The body cannot initiate a disease. 
The body is but clay, passive clay, in the hands 
of the potter-mind. It never acts, but is always 
acted upon. The disease always exists first in 
the mind and only afterwards in the body. 

This view of disease is quite congruous with 
the first view presented above, to wit, bodily dis- 
ease is the bodily expression or externalization 
of mental disorder. Indeed, this "invitation" 
idea which seems to be a third view of disease 
is really only another way of describing the first 
view. "Invite" is only a figure of speech. 

A little reflection will show that this "invita- 
tion" language does not keep step at all with the 
language that describes disease as symptomatic of 
bodily disorder. Fever, pain, sleeplessness and 
so forth, whether themselves diseases or symptoms 
of disease, are said to be results of the working 
of curative forces. Then it is curative forces, 
the lawbreaking mind has "invited," not physi- 
cal injury and disorder! When, however, the 
New Thoughtist is not thinking about physical 
ills as something to be vibrated with and loved 
because they are the effects of the inworking of 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 59 

the helping, healing spirit, but instead is think- 
ing of physical ills as having been invited by 
the mind and as bound to come because they have 
been thus invited, he is thinking of physical ills 
as genuinely ills, evils, coming as an inescapable 
result upon the wrongdoer. These two views 
of disease are utterly contrary in the absolute 
form in which New Thought propounds them. 
One may well be chary of entrusting the issues 
of life and death to people who are thus en- 
tangled in their ideas about disease, and are 
not even aware of the tangle. 

And yet we cordially acknowledge that some 
of the New Thought pronouncements concerning 
disease contain valuable truth to which the wise 
man will give good heed. The mind does to 
some extent express itself in one's physical con- 
dition. It is important to realize this and to 
act accordingly. New Thought is doing good 
service by its insistence upon this fact. It would, 
however, do far better service if it did not so 
exaggerate and distort the fact that to accept 
its presentation of the fact in toto we must sur- 
render common sense and violate logical consist- 
ency. 

Then, again, it is quite true that, whatever 
distinction between disease and symptoms of dis- 
ease the medical authorities might consider valid, 
many of the disagreeable and painful accompani- 
ments of illness are connected with the process 
which we ordinary people describe as "Nature's 



60 NEW THOUGHT 

effort to throw off the disease." A clear percep- 
tion of this fact will help any reasonable man to 
be patient and even to congratulate himself upon 
the presence of this unpleasant evidence that life 
is making a winning fight in the contest with dis- 
integration and death. A realization of this 
will be conducive to peace and rest and hope 
and cheerfulness and joy, and these mental con- 
ditions will in turn accelerate the healing process. 
New Thought tries to set forth these indubitable 
facts by its high-flown talk about vibration and 
about loving your enemies and thereby changing 
them into friends, and about the universal spirit, 
the "All-Good," working under invariable law 
for your recuperation, and so forth. And New 
Thought has been a blessing to many people who 
perhaps would never have come to realize these 
things if presented to them soberly as a simple 
cup of cold water but who become intoxicated 
with these truths when offered to them in the 
guise of effervescent champagne. 

Again, the retributive nature of a good deal 
of physical disorder and the fact of personal 
responsibility for many of our pains and aches 
and ills and the important idea that physical con- 
ditions are not the result of caprice or arbitrari- 
ness but of the working of a strict principle of 
causation — these great and important concep- 
tions constitute the invaluable kernel of truth in 
that bizarre notion of "inviting" diseases. Some 
people perhaps can learn these ideas best when 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 61 

they are conveyed in the New Thought fashion. 
To this extent the cult does good and we are 
glad for the service thus rendered. 

We now come to the subject of accidents. If 
bodily conditions are without exception only the 
expression of preceding mental conditions; if 
every state of physical disorder has been "in- 
vited" and invited by the sufferer himself, how is 
an accident possible? New Thought is consist- 
ent sometimes and is as thorough-going in its 
occasional consistency as it ever is in its incon- 
sistency. And New Thought replies to the above 
question by averring boldly : There are no acci- 
dents. Accidents are impossible. If you slip 
on the ice in the dark going down hill and break 
your leg, it is not an accident. This is not a 
joke, gentle reader, any more than the injury is. 
There are no jokes in New Thought; it is desti- 
tute of humor, that is, so far as the New Thought- 
ist's own perception goes. No, it is not an acci- 
dent. Law is universal and this has occurred 
under law. Very good. You cannot escape 
from that net, can you? 

But (and this is what takes the wind out of 
your sails and brings you down on your beam 
ends) you invited this occurrence and it would 
not have taken place if you had not invited it. 
But when did you invite this fracture of your leg? 
Of course you did not do so consciously ; at least 
not during your present incarnation. Your 
present conscious mind is fully acquitted of play- 



62 NEW THOUGHT 

ing you such a mean trick. Then it must be that 
low fellow, the subconscious mind, that invited 
your downfall. But don't be too hard on your 
subconscious self. For it is only a composite 
of what was once conscious experience. Indeed? 
Then sometime or other I must have consciously 
invited this fracture. But I know I never did 
such an incredibly foolish thing. Well, we may 
safely admit that in your present incarnation 
you are much too intelligent to be guilty of such 
folly. But how do you know but that in some 
preceding incarnation you were big enough fool 
consciously to invite yourself to break your own 
leg? Humiliating as it is, that was the case 
beyond all question. Proof? Proof abundant, 
at least to the enlightened. Your leg is broken. 
A broken leg is a physical condition. Physical 
conditions arise only as a result of being invited 
by the mind. All subconsciousness was once 
conscious. Ergo, you consciously invited your- 
self to break your leg. And if you did not ex- 
tend the kind invitation in this life, then you 
must have done so in a preceding life, and the 
invitation was transmitted secretly in the sphere 
of the subconscious. Could mathematics do bet- 
ter in the way of linked logic long drawn out? 
Is it not plain that accidents are impossible? 
We see now another wonderful truth that up to 
this point has modestly kept itself hidden. The 
subconscious mind is the sum total of all the past 
conscious experiences not only of this life, but of 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 63 

all your past lives in no one knows how many 
preceding incarnations ! 

We reach the inconceivability of accidents and 
this enlarged view of the subconscious self by 
way of the "expression" doctrine also. Since 
the external is only the expression of the internal 
and since your body with all its experiences and 
states to the last detail has its corresponding 
mental experiences and states and externalizes 
your mind and your mental experiences, and since 
this is the law of existence and law has no ex- 
ceptions, you must be content to acknowledge 
that at sometime or other, somewhere or other, 
you did verily issue an invitation to yourself to 
trip yourself up on a dark night and break your 
leg. Rigid logic again and closely woven con- 
sistency. Such consistency leading to such wild 
notions awakens suspicion that the premises are 
incorrect. But if the premises are incorrect, 
New Thought as a philosophy collapses like a 
house of cards. 

The mention of a broken leg leads us on to 
consider the attitude of New Thought toward 
surgery. If the two broken ends of the bone are 
not brought together by mechanical means, can 
New Thought mend the break and do a workman- 
like job? Such a question is scouted by New 
Thought spokesmen as unreasonable. They say 
that we would not expect such a feat from a sur- 
geon. Then why ask a New Thought practi- 
tioner or believer to work such a marvel? It is 



64 NEW THOUGHT 

asserted that there is nothing in New Thought 
out of harmony with surgery properly practiced. 

In the first place, it is true that no one would 
expect a surgeon to mend a broken bone apart 
from the use of material means. For the sur- 
geon professes to use his hands as well as his 
mind. All his beliefs, moreover, accord with this 
method. 

In the second place, is it true that New 
Thought principles are in harmony with sur- 
gery? New Thought asserts that a given physi- 
cal condition is only the externalization of the pa- 
tient's mind. This is expressly said to be true 
of the fracture itself. Why then is it not true 
of the coming together and the uniting of the 
two broken ends of the bone? Indeed, if any 
physical condition is only the automatic, in- 
evitable expression of mental states, what pos- 
sible room is there for the mechanical manipula- 
tion of the bone, and that by the hands of another 
person? The fundamental trouble is not physi- 
cal at all; it is mental. Before there could be a 
physical fracture, there had to be a mental one. 
The only way to reduce the physical fracture is 
first to reduce the mental one. That once done, 
surgery would be quite superfluous, because the 
restored mental order must externalize itself in 
restored physical order. The truth is that the 
New Thought doctrine of "expression" and "in- 
vitation" logically not only makes the surgeon's 
work unnecessary but even impossible. For the 



BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT 65 

surgeon knows nothing about a broken leg as a 
mental state, and consequently he does not ad- 
dress himself to the mind. He deals with a 
bone or at least thinks he does. But his labor 
is all in vain. He suffers under a singular de- 
lusion. The bone simply cannot be mended until 
the mind is first mended. And, poor ignoramus, 
he knows nothing about mending minds ; how 
then can he mend a broken bone? But surgeons 
do mend broken bones ; and the New Thoughtist 
should examine again his fundamental principles 
to see where the error is. 

Although New Thought affirms that clean 
and proper surgery is in harmony with its prin- 
ciples, yet it does not regard surgery as the 
ideal method. It is necessary at present only 
because of the hardness of our hearts, even of 
New Thought hearts. The present need of sur- 
gery is due to the fact that, unlike that "su- 
preme idealist," Jesus, the present New Thought- 
is ts, teachers and disciples alike, have not ap- 
proached the ideal closely enough to be able to 
use the requisite degree of the power of the 
"real man" within. Progress in the acquisition 
of this power is gradual. We are powerfully 
affected by the materialistic thought so rife 
to-day. The subconscious minds of New 
Thoughtists themselves are slow to accept New 
Thought in all its length and breadth. 

But the world is moving on. All men are 
progressing under the inescapable law of evolu- 



66 



NEW THOUGHT 



tion. The momentum is increasing and is resist- 
less. Consequently if you should break your leg 
several aeons hence after you have passed 
through a dozen or score more of incarnations 
and all the time should move forward steadily 
along the path of New Thought, it is to be hoped 
that then you would be able to dispense with all 
mechanical and material surgery. Indeed, sur- 
gery will necessarily be obsolete in a time when 
you will be able to dissolve and re-create your 
entire body or any part of it by the sheer power 
of thought. Such a power would certainly put 
the surgeon out of business. 



CHAPTER IX 

PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF 
HEALING 

New Thought practices two main methods of 
healing. They may be called the health- affirma- 
tion method and the harmony-with-disease 
method. These two methods of healing are quite 
incompatible with each other. They cannot be 
united. They can, of course, be practiced al- 
ternately and the patient can thereby receive 
whatever benefit each method may be able to im- 
part. 

Let us first examine the health-affirmation 
method of healing. The New Thought believer, 
if sick, gives himself some such mental "treat- 
ment" as follows. Or, a New Thought healer 
will give it in substance to him. The phrasing 
can be varied ad infinitum so long as the sub- 
stantial contents remain the same. 

I am well. The tides of life, healthful life, 
perfect life are coursing* through me, strengthen- 
ing, invigorating, uplifting me. The reality in 
me is spirit, infinite spirit, perfect spirit. The 
spirit of wholeness, the spirit that is full of 
health, infinite in vigor and power is in me, 
dominates me, controls me. Life, only life, 

67 



68 NEW THOUGHT 

abundant life, almighty divine life, fills me; it 
fills me to overflowing. Life pulsates in my ar- 
teries ; it feeds and tones up my nerves ; it re- 
pairs the tissues. Life, perfect life thrills every 
cell; it tingles in every atom. I feel the thrill 
and tingle of life in every particle of my body. 
I am well ; I am healthy ; I am strong. I am full 
of vitality. Life is at the flood. Life in me is 
always at the flood. And so forth. 

Many a man has found this to be an efficacious 
"treatment." It is necessary to repeat the 
treatment frequently. One should repeat it fre- 
quently enough to create an atmosphere of that 
kind for the mind. These ideas should be held 
often enough and intensely enough to become 
the dominant note in the man's life. Indeed, 
the treatment must be continued for weeks, 
months, and in some cases years before health 
will be completely restored. 

This method is based on the idea that the outer 
and visible is only the symbol of the inner and 
invisible. The universal law is that the inner 
shall find expression. Fill your mind with any 
thoughts, true or false, good or bad, and those 
thoughts will become externalized; they can- 
not escape concrete embodiment. Consequently 
thoughts of health, imaginings of health, desires- 
for health, and the will to be well, cannot help 
resulting in actual health. Particularly the 
positive affirmation that / am well must find ex- 
pression sooner or later in bodily perfection. 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 69 

But if I am not well; if actual ill health and 
the purpose to become well is the very reason 
why I keep saying "I am well" ; if the fact that 
I look forward to the bodily expression of the 
thought "I am well" as a future experience shows 
that I admit bodily ill health to be my present 
state, then am I not a liar when I say "I am 
well"? New Thought answers, No. This 
method of healing is justified by the following 
truths: Universal spirit is perfect in every re- 
spect. That which is perfect is not diseased; 
there is no disorder in its life. Pain, being either 
physical or mental, cannot be felt by spirit. 
Now the "real man in you" is universal spirit. 
Therefore you do not suffer pain. You are not 
diseased. You cannot be ill. You are perfectly 
well, and have the right to say so. You are 
merely reminding yourself and impressing upon 
your consciousness as vividly as possible the cen- 
tral truth about yourself, namely, that the real 
man in you is God, the omnipotent and perfect 
spirit, the only being in existence. You are not 
telling a lie to yourself, you are not acting the 
hypocrite. You are telling yourself the truth, 
the truth the unenlightened do not know, the 
truth which is the glory of the New Thought 
philosophy. 

The chief secret of health, then, is this so- 
called "consciousness of God," this living the 
"real" life. 

But surely New Thought juggles with words. 



70 NEW THOUGHT 

The infinitely perfect spirit is the "real" man 
"in" you; therefore, the claim is, whatever is 
true of the real man is true of you. The real 
man is well; therefore, you are well. Now this 
is a tremendous fallacy and altogether vitiates 
the professed justification of the health- affirma- 
tion method of healing. For "you" and "the 
real man in you" are not usually identical in 
New Thought. The word "you" is a personal 
pronoun and distinguishes you from others. It 
denotes individuality. But the "real man" is 
neither personal nor individual; it is instead im- 
personal and universal. The identification of 
"you" with the "real man" is illegitimately re- 
sorted to only to meet a special need. 

Another fallacy is the implicit denial of the 
sickness. The real man is not sick, and you are 
not sick. But if neither one is sick, who or what 
is sick? If no one is sick, then what is all the 
pother about? Why take a "treatment?" Why 
resort to the healer? The fact that a man un- 
dergoes the treatment and books are written for 
his direction and encouragement is a virtual 
acknowledgment that someone is sick. The 
treatment and the alleged justification of the 
treatment is a denial that he is sick. It is thus a 
"Yea and Nay" scheme. It affirms and denies 
one and the same thing. 

One can understand how a sick man might 
constantly say to himself: I am sick and need 
healing and strength. I do now open up my 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 71 

being to the incoming of the tides of cleansing, 
healing, restoring influence from the infinite 
Spirit, my Creator and the source of power. 
But to say that "I" am that infinite Spirit of 
power and health, and at the same time to say 
(by deed, though not by word) "I" am sick is a 
very different position and is simply blowing hot 
and cold with the same breath. 

A third fallacy appears when we consider the 
subconscious mind — that death's-head at every 
New Thought feast. The subconscious mind is 
said to be the depository of all our thoughts, 
feelings, and volitions of all our past lives and 
of our present life up to the present moment. 
None are lost ; all continue to live and act. 
Among these past mental experiences that thus 
live on in perpetuity are a host of erroneous 
"sickly" ideas, feelings, and volitions. The 
body, be it remembered, is the absolutely exact 
expression of the subconscious mind and there- 
fore of this host of "sickly" and evil mental oc- 
currences as well as of the healthy and good 
ones. 

How, then, is it possible for the body ever 
to become perfectly healthy? This is surely a 
hard nut to crack. But New Thought writers 
apparently do not even know there is any such 
nut. They talk about modifying the quality of 
the subconscious mind by sending down into it 
from the conscious mind continual rills of healthy 
ideas. They forget that according to their own 



72 NEW THOUGHT 

definition of the subconscious mind and accord- 
ing to their own solemn warnings based upon 
that definition, the subconsciousness is an Augean 
stable that can never be wholly cleansed. For 
its sickly, evil ideas and emotions can never be 
ousted. Once harbored they abide forever, or 
at least as long as the mind abides. And since 
the body is said to register and express the sub- 
conscious mind with finest precision, is not the 
body in a hopelessly evil case? 

Any one of these three fallacies is important 
enough to condemn the principles on which the 
health-affirmation method of healing is based. 
This method, nevertheless, is not entirely errone- 
ous. It is, however, an illustration of the New- 
Thought practice of putting truths out of focus 
so that true perspective and proper proportions 
are destroyed. 

In closing this discussion of the health-affir- 
mation treatment of disease let us consider the 
length of the healing process. As already stated, 
the "treatments" must in some cases be repeated 
through many years. There are several grave 
reasons for this. First, it is the conscious mind 
that makes the affirmation. Now, although the 
conscious mind has a great influence over the 
body, it is the subconscious mind chiefly that 
regulates the physical life. Consequently the 
body will not be healthy until the affirmations 
of health become dominant in the subconscious- 
ness. It is characteristic, however, for the lower 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 73 

self to change slowly. Therefore, in many in- 
stances the body will not change to health 
rapidly. 

Secondly, your body is now expressing on the 
physical plane a great deal of your past badness 
and error in the mental plane. It will take time 
to counterbalance this by new thoughts of health 
and power. (As we have already seen no new 
thoughts of health can, according to New 
Thought, annihilate old thoughts of sickness, 
and these "sickly" ideas must continue to be 
expressed by the body.) 

Thirdly, our environment is a materialistic 
one, crowded with errors as to the body and as 
to health and disease. We have to make, each 
one for himself, a new thought environment; we 
have to become at home in a new world of ideas, 
New Thought ideas. But this cannot be done in 
a moment. It takes time. Eternal vigilance 
also is the price of our liberty to be perfectly 
well. 

Fourthly, the healing of the body is vitally 
connected with the transformation of the whole 
man, including his moral nature. It is useless, 
according to some New Thought writers, to try 
to heal the body apart from endeavor to purify 
the soul. For physical disorder results not only 
from unwisely thinking thoughts of physical 
weakness and disease. It results also from im- 
pure, covetous, proud, jealous, selfish, malignant 
thoughts and feelings. Bodily health is the 



74 NEW THOUGHT 

physical expression and counterpart of morality, 
love, goodness. Moral transformation, however, 
is usually a slow process. Restoration to health, 
therefore, is equally slow. 

This emphasis on the ethical is praiseworthy. 
But alas ! once more truth is distorted almost out 
of all recognition of its fair lineaments. Is it 
true that men in good health are necessarily 
saints and sick men are necessarily sinners? 
What about the mighty men of valor who have 
been ruffians, pirates, thieves, and blacklegs? 
What shall we say of men and women who have 
been truly salt of the earth and yet have passed 
their days in weakness and pain? "Who sinned, 
this man, or his parents, that he should be born 
blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man 
sin, nor his parents ; but that the works of God 
should be made manifest in him." (John 9 : 2-3.) 

For such reasons as the above the New 
Thought disciple sometimes makes slow progress 
toward health, and has to persevere for a long 
time in the face of seeming failure. But let him 
remember that healing takes place in the mind 
before it appears in the body ; and that if he is 
taking faithfully the mental treatment prescribed 
above and repeatedly immerses himself in the 
God-consciousness, his subconscious mind is 
surely changing. Let him remember also that 
since the inner must find expression in the outer 
and the outer is only the externalization of the 
inner, and since the law is absolutely invariable, 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 75 

his body simply cannot help being healed in 
course of time (if he lives long enough!). Faith 
is essential, confidence is the talisman, persever- 
ance is the secret of success. For without faith 
the affirmation that I am well is no affirmation, it 
is merely a form of words. To have power over 
the subconscious mind the conscious mind's af- 
firmation must be a real one. By the law of the 
relation of the conscious to the subconscious mind 
the intenser the former's belief in an idea the more 
deeply and powerfully will that idea impress and 
change the latter. Faith, therefore, strong 
faith has a large place in New Thought healing. 
It is not usually called faith. The New Thought 
votary does not believe; he knows. 



CHAPTER X 

PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF 
HEALING 

(Continued) 

The other main method of healing in New- 
Thought is that of harmonizing with the disease 
and the pain. The word "vibrate" is one of the 
shibboleths by which a New Thoughtist betrays 
his connection with the cult. We are directed to 
"vibrate" with the fever or the headache or the 
insomnia. 

When sickness overtakes you, do not resist it. 
This principle or law of nonresistance is one of 
the leading features of New Thought thera- 
peutics. We must not resist a disease because 
resistance produces "friction." "Friction" is a 
chief bugaboo in New Thought. It is as de- 
structive as grit in a delicate mechanism. Re- 
sistance to disease is useless. In fact it is worse 
than useless. It tightens the grip of the disease 
upon you. The more you struggle the deeper 
the fangs sink into your shrinking organism. 
Whatever you do, do not resist, do not strive 
against the disease that seems to threaten your 
life. 

For disease will cease to threaten you with 
death if you vibrate with it. You can change its 
76 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 77 

frowning aspect into one of benignancy. Smile 
upon it and it will smile upon you. Does not 
Jesus say, "Love your enemies"? Disease is an 
enemy or seems to be such. Love this enemy and 
it cannot help becoming your friend. This is 
the law of the universe and cannot be broken. 
Nothing can harm you but you yourself. No 
harm can come to you from the disease if you 
love it. If you do not love it, harm will come, 
and you will be to blame. In this matter as in 
all others you are the only possible source 
of harm to yourself. 

Therefore regard the fever as your friend. It 
is your friend, though disguised as an enemy. 
It has a mission. That mission is to teach you 
a needed lesson ; it is to discipline you ; it is to 
heal you. The representations of this mission 
are varied, but in any case the purpose of the 
disease is kindly; it intends only good to you. 
It is your friend. Welcome this friend, rejoice 
in its presence, embrace the sickness, vibrate 
with it, harmonize with it, yes, love it. 

By welcoming physical ills is meant in part 
that you should give them amplest opportunity. 
Give the fever the freedom of the city. Give 
the cancer carte blanche. Desire tuberculosis to 
do its perfect work. Place no obstacle in the 
way of cerebro-spinal meningitis. One would 
naturally think that to increase the scope and 
power of your dear friend's beneficent ministry 
within your physical organism would be to gain 



78 NEW THOUGHT 

a greater blessing. The curious thing, however, 
is that you must be careful not to increase the 
power of this friend. Let him go to the length 
of his rope, but above all things do not lengthen 
the rope a single inch. Resistance gives greater 
power to the disease; therefore do not resist. If 
diphtheria is simply the effect of recuperative 
forces, one would think that the increase of its 
virulence would indicate an increase of the power 
and efficiency of the recuperative forces. The 
simple fact is that the increase of the diphtheria 
means the increased effectiveness of the destruc- 
tive forces. The New Thoughtist is forced to 
recognize the existence of destructive forces. 
His explanation is that diphtheria left to itself 
or rather "vibrated with" is only recuperative, 
but the instant you resist it, it becomes destruc- 
tive, the friend is changed to an enemy. Forces 
that are not the forces of the mind destroy the 
body because the mind resists their loving work. 
This attitude to disease is based upon the idea 
that sickness is the result of the operation of uni- 
versal spirit working directly upon the body. 
In some way or other the body is in a damaged 
condition and needs repair and renovation. 
Spirit is the "Eternal Wholeness" and by its 
very nature seeks to promote wholeness and per- 
fection everywhere. Spirit also is loving and 
seeks to promote that which is good. Perfect 
health is wholeness on the physical plane; it is a 
good thing. Consequently the loving spirit 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 79 

seeks to establish and preserve health in all bodies. 

Now the effort of spirit to heal the body ap- 
pears in the form of disease or in the form of 
the symptoms of disease. The New Thought 
conception in this particular is very misty. We 
are told to love fever, pain, weariness, sleepless- 
ness and so forth, because they are the result of 
the work of the recuperative forces of spirit 
operating to restore the body to health. That 
frightful hobgoblin, insomnia, is an angel of 
light and love transformed into the appearance 
of Satan. It is really a good thing and eman- 
ates from the infinitely perfect and loving spirit 
that is thus working for a person's health. 

This conception of disease is based upon the 
idea that spirit operates directly upon body. 
The mind has no part or lot in this matter of 
healing except to stand out of the way and not 
interfere and especially not resist. The health- 
affirmation advocate is properly an alien in this 
circle of ideas. 

Again, observe that if the disease itself is the 
friend we are to love, as is sometimes plainly 
stated, then the disease is not the bodily disorder 
or damage itself but the effect of the operation 
of recuperative forces. But if the physical dis- 
order is not to be called disease, what shall we 
call it? New Thought gives it no name. Con- 
fusion of thought necessarily arises. 

Again, the disagreeable accompaniments of 
the healing process, such as fever, pain, sleep- 



80 NEW THOUGHT 

lessness or what not, are said to be the result of 
"friction." There can be no healing, at least 
usually, without friction. But New Thought 
warns us against friction. It is deadly. We 
must not resist disease because resistance pro- 
duces friction, and restoration to health is diffi- 
cult proportionately to the amount of friction. 
Here is something of a riddle. 

Note further that the idea of resistance is 
very prominent. Who resists? You resist. 
"You" in this case means your mind. Positive 
resistance, then, between spirit and mind is a 
fact according to New Thought. How then can 
spirit be "the All" and mind be simply spirit 
expressing itself or the expression of spirit or the 
means of the expression of spirit? Will the idea 
that mind is "the partial expression" of spirit 
abolish the difficulty and harmonize this actual 
antagonism between spirit and mind with the 
fundamental monism of New Thought? 

It ought to be self-evident that a man cannot 
give himself this harmonizing-with-disease treat- 
ment without thinking about the disease. How 
can a man vibrate with appendicitis, embrace it, 
love it, without fixing his mind upon it? But 
according to the health-affirmation method this 
is just what a man must not do. He must not 
think of the disease; he must only affirm health. 
Contrary to Christian Science, which in many 
respects is identical with New Thought, he must 
not even deny the existence of disease, lest in so 



PRINCIPLES OF HEALING 81 

doing the bare idea of the disease be presented to 
his mind. 

The New Thought theory of nonresistance is, 
if not true ? perhaps second cousin to the truth. 
To take away every vestige of fear and replace 
anxiety and dread and alarm with confidence, 
serenity, hope, and joy is to do a great deal for 
a sick man. It is of great therapeutical value 
to calm the mind, to create repose, to inspire 
assurance that what is is for the best, that one 
is on the upward road, and that the very thing 
which many dread will prove a blessing. 

All this is possible to intelligent Christian faith 
and has been actualized in the experience of 
millions of Christian believers. In order to re- 
ceive this help in sickness one does not need to 
worship at any shrine of pantheism like New 
Thought. He does not need to accept the para- 
dox that we are to love disease in order to 
get rid of it, that we are to embrace loathsome 
leprosy that it may leave us and leave us, we 
fondly hope, forever; going to the full length of 
absurdity by rejecting medicine and belittling 
sanitation because the use of remedies and care 
is resistance to disease, converting it from a 
friend into a foe! 

Finally, New Thought's relation to health is 
not only restorer but preserver. Indeed, in 
theory its chief value to the physical life con- 
sists not in the cure of disease but in its preven- 
tion. The affirmation of health is said to be just 



82 NEW THOUGHT 

as efficacious in the preservation of health as in 
its restoration. And this position is thoroughly 
consistent. According to New Thought the 
power to preserve or restore health issues from a 
new consciousness, the "God-consciousness." Its 
therapeutics is merely a by-product of a process 
that affects a man's whole life. The aim of New 
Thought, like Christianity, is to transform in- 
dividual men and by so doing to build up a new 
humanity. It seeks to create in us a new con- 
sciousness incomparably wiser, purer, stronger, 
happier than the ordinary human consciousness 
of to-day. This new consciousness is necessarily 
accompanied by bodily perfection ; and, if true to 
its principles, New Thought would never waver 
from the position that bodily health cannot be 
produced or preserved apart from the mental, 
social, and moral health of the individual con- 
cerned. Of course this last position is a re- 
ductio ad absurdum. 



CHAPTER XI 
DRUGS, HYGIENE, AND DIET 

It is easy to see why New Thought deprecates 
the use of medicine, though, as will appear in the 
present exposition, from one of its standpoints, 
the use of the materia medica is reasonable and 
helpful. According to the health-affirmation 
idea drugs are useless. How can a man affirm 
perfect health, and at the same time pour drugs 
down his throat? If I am well, I do not need 
medicine. Further, to use drugs would be an ad- 
mission that I am ill and so would be contrary to 
the affirmation of health and would nullify that 
method of healing. 

The use of drugs is also diametrically opposed 
to the harmonizing-with-disease method of heal- 
ing. How can a man welcome disease and at 
the same time fire pills at it? How can a man 
love a sickness and yet seek to banish it? How 
can a man "vibrate" with an illness and yet try 
to get rid of it by the use of "poison"? The use 
of drugs is a wanton insult to one's benefactor. 
It is resistance; and resistance only serves to 
change a friend into an enemy and makes the 
disease or its symptoms destructive instead of 
curative. 

Drugs are useless also because of the power of 



84 NEW THOUGHT 

thought. Thought creates, moulds, and controls 
the body to the last detail and degree. This is 
true of the bodies of all men, and not only of the 
bodies of New Thought disciples. If thought 
has the whole field to itself, medicine is an in- 
terloper, and, further, an interloper that can ac- 
complish nothing. At least, its trespassing is 
effective only so far as thoughts arise in connec- 
tion with the use of the drug and do their work 
on the body. 

The last sentence suggests a solid basis in New 
Thought itself for the use of drugs. The body 
is the expression of the mind and its ideas. If 
it is my fixed idea that by taking the pills I 
shall be cured, that involves the idea that I am 
going to be cured. This idea of cure cannot 
help becoming externalized or expressed in an 
actual bodily cure. So long as I have the idea 
that healing is coming and is certain, the heal- 
ing will take place. If the use of drugs is, in 
my ignorance, prerequisite to this confidence, 
then it is reasonable to use them even from the 
New Thought standpoint. And we find that 
sometimes New Thought theorists do suffer the 
use of medicine. This sufferance of a "super- 
stition" is said to be only a concession to the new 
recruit or the weak brother who as yet can only 
toddle on the high plane of New Thought and 
still gasps for breath in its rarefied atmosphere. 
But note that while the use of drugs is quite 
compatible with the New Thought teaching con- 






DRUGS, HYGIENE, AND DIET 85 

cerning the complete and exclusive power of the 
mind over the body, it will no more mix with the 
health-affirmation and the harmonizing-with-dis- 
ease methods of healing than oil will mix with 
water. 

And what would the reader suppose New 
Thought's estimate of hygiene to be? If New 
Thought principles are correct and if logic has 
any rights at all, then sanitation is in the same 
class with the use of drugs. There is no need 
to repeat the above course of reasoning; it ap- 
plies equally well to sanitary science. Recall 
also what was said in an earlier chapter con- 
cerning surgery. Most New Thought writers 
are not audacious enough to flout sanitation. 
The "materialistic" spirit of the age has that 
much hold on them. They say: Hygiene is de- 
sirable, though the power of thought is the prime 
thing. This is the New Thought flag at nearly 
half-mast. Why lower the proud colors so far? 
Why should the claim that the power of thought 
is all-sufficient and indeed is the only existent 
power yield an inch to the claims of sanitation? 
Such yielding can only be by way of concession 
to our ignorance. Like the concession to use 
drugs, this concession also nullifies the idea of 
our infinite perfection which is the nerve and 
sinew of the health-affirmation method of healing 
and of preserving health. 

Diet is also a matter of professedly little im- 
portance to the New Thoughtist. It might be 



86 NEW THOUGHT 

hinted here that, according to the New Thought 
idea that the only power exercised over the body 
is mental, it is passing strange that food is neces- 
sary at all. It will not be necessary in the 
golden age when thought will be able to create 
and dissolve the body. At present, for some in- 
explicable reason, we must eat. New Thought 
we see has still a sphinx or two. But does it 
make any difference what we eat? Each New 
Thought writer is a free lance. Some say, for 
example, eat no flesh. Others enunciate the wel- 
come doctrine: What a man eats should be 
governed by his individual taste. Some rashly 
cross the boundary of New Thought and stand- 
ing on our vulgar, materialistic soil warn us 
against "overloading the stomach with rich food 
which clogs the system and produces disease." 
This is a fearful jolt for the hapless uninitiated 
reader. Not that he craves the rich food; but 
to see a New Thoughtist fall right off his ethe- 
real "subjective plane" and strike our earth-level 
"objective plane" with such a sickening thud — 
all the spectator's strength goes from him and he 
is left as limp as a rag. But his spirit is re- 
vived almost at once by being assured by the 
same writer that digestion is chiefly a matter of 
mental states. Complete recovery is retarded, 
however, by reading a statement by another 
author to whom thought-power has absolutely no 
limit that it is difficult to cure malaria in the 
swamps where it was contracted. Then again 



DRUGS, HYGIENE, AND DIET 87 

it is like taking a cordial to see the New Thought- 
ists laugh microbes to scorn and ridicule people 
for being afraid of such tiny things as disease 
germs, real or imaginary. Still it is rather hard 
on the critic's system to swing back and forth in 
this fashion like a pendulum. 

In these practical and important matters of 
drugs, hygiene, and diet (and we may include 
surgery also), matters upon which life and death 
depend, the trumpets of this quixotic movement 
give forth no certain sound. New Thought os- 
cillates between the only position logically de- 
rivable from most of its fundamental ideas and 
the position which ordinary men would call the 
common sense one; that is to say, it oscillates 
between entirely ignoring drugs, hygiene, and 
diet and giving them whatever place in human life 
a gradually ripening collective wisdom rooted 
in experience may commend. 



CHAPTER XII 

PRACTICAL DEFECTS IN 
NEW THOUGHT THERAPEUTICS 

When New Thought promises a man the res- 
toration or preservation of his health by the sheer 
power of thought, it assumes that a man can 
control his own mind. This assumption is also 
at the bottom of its doctrine of "invitation." 
If a man is well, he is sure to become sick, if 
his mind consciously or subconsciously (and the 
subconscious was once the conscious) "invites" 
disease. And how is disease invited? By think- 
ing thoughts of sickness and weakness and weari- 
ness and pain, and by harboring feelings of 
pride, envy, covetousness, hatred, lust, impati- 
ence, uncharitableness, or selfishness in any form, 
and by willing anything that is wrong, wrong 
in the slightest degree. What control over his 
mind, therefore, a man must have to prevent dis- 
ease from invading his body ! If a man on the 
other hand is sick, how can he be cured? He 
must not only keep all these evil thoughts, feel- 
ings, and volitions out of his mind, he must 
positively think correct and noble ideas, cherish 
moral and benevolent feelings, even toward the 
most spiteful enemies and the most degraded men, 
and will only that which is right. What a con- 
88 



PRACTICAL DEFECTS 89 

trol of his own mind a man must have to heal 
himself of his disease! No wonder that New 
Thought has its fair proportion of backsliders. 

This assumption that a man can control his 
own mind completely, or nearly so, is a fatal flaw 
in New Thought therapeutics. For it is becom- 
ing ever clearer to psychologists and alienists and 
to thoughtful people in general that it is not so 
easy for a man to control his mind as many per- 
sons suppose. In fact, just how best to gain con- 
trol over our own minds is an extremely difficult 
problem. Experience is crammed with evidence 
of its difficulty. Temptation, moral struggle, in- 
ward conflict, aspiration toward ideals hard to 
attain, mean nothing unless they mean that men 
are far from possessing perfect control of their 
own minds. 

New Thought itself has its own ways of ad- 
mitting this truth. The conscious mind is often 
perverse, wilful, wicked, malignant, a rebel 
against the "real man," the spirit, not submitting 
to the guidance and control of the spirit as it 
should. Again, the subconscious mind is often 
opposed to the conscious mind and to spirit, and 
in so far as it is evil, as it always is in some 
degree, it is at variance with the spirit which is 
"All-Good" and also with the conscious mind 
when the latter reforms. 

Furthermore, the conscious mind in many in- 
stances becomes discouraged in its attempts at 
mental healing, and backslides all too readily 



90 NEW THOUGHT 

in consequence, and New Thought books contain 
numerous passages exhorting the conscious mind 
to persevere in the good way ; for unless the con- 
scious mind is persistent and thorough, the body 
cannot be healed. This is a clear recognition 
that it is extremely difficult for a man to control 
his own mind. 

The New Thought emphasis upon the relation 
of sin to disease and righteousness to health is 
tremendous. It is one-sided but it is mighty. 
This emphasis strikes a responsive chord in the 
Christian heart. It is a pity that New Thought 
adulterates the truth with so much error, and 
thus promises far more than it can fulfill and 
brings the truth itself into disrepute by reason 
of the error and the failure. We must condemn 
the New Thought therapeutics as impracticable 
and unjustifiable when, on the ground that a 
man can control his body by controlling his mind, 
the use of medicine and the aid of the physician 
is opposed and sanitation and dietetics are rele- 
gated to a very subordinate and obscure place 
in order to emphasize and glorify mental influ- 
ence upon the body. 

One need hardly proceed further in criticism of 
New Thought therapeutics. If a man cannot 
control his mind sufficiently, or if his acquisition 
of this power is slow, so slow that in most cases 
it will not be complete until some future incarna- 
tion, then the alluring promises of New Thought, 
just as in the case of Christian Science, are like 



PRACTICAL DEFECTS 91 

the false lights along a dangerous coast that 
lure the ships to the rocks and to destruction. 
Of course New Thought advocates have no in- 
tention of thus performing the work of wreckers. 

Another fatal flaw in New Thought thera- 
peutics is the assumption that a man's mind has 
far more control over his body than it really 
possesses. The mind does influence the body. 
But the New Thought position is an extreme one, 
and, because extreme, invalid. Mind is the legiti- 
mate controller of matter. At present our minds 
do not have their rightful and destined control 
of matter. A new era is dawning, the era of 
New Thought, in which the mind will gain abso- 
lute control. Men's minds will then be able to 
summon material atoms at will and by the power 
of thought shape them into visible forms and in 
turn disintegrate these forms. At that time a 
man will be able to dissolve his own body, and in 
this manner part with it instead of by the un- 
natural process of death. Some hold further 
that men will be able to dissolve and reproduce 
their bodies at will as often as may suit their 
purpose. 

New Thought writers have no evidence for 
this, none at least that is available for use with 
us who live on the "objective plane." To us it 
can be naught but the wildest speculation, 
clothed often in magniloquent verbiage. But 
even if it were all true, what then? How does 
this bear upon the healing of disease at the pres- 



92 NEW THOUGHT 

ent time, for example, in your own case? New 
Thought itself confesses that this complete mas- 
tery over matter is only an ideal, not an actu- 
ality. How then can I be sure that my mind 
can gain such a degree of control over my body 
as to eject disease, and stop pain, and prevent 
disease and pain for the future? 

We are told that we can be sure of the result. 
We are assured also that when a man enters upon 
the path of New Thought, he at once begins to 
make progress toward the complete mastery of 
matter by the power of his mind. The practical 
difficulty inheres in this very idea of progress. 
For if it is a matter of progress and not of in- 
stantaneous reception or achievement, the very 
critical question is, How long will the progress 
take? Will the length and ease of the pilgrim- 
age be the same for all persons? When dis- 
appointed devotees complain that they do not 
get the results hoped for, the best that New 
Thought can do is to assure them that the re- 
sults will appear if only the patients persevere 
long enough. But the legitimate question still 
remains, Will my mind acquire sufficient power 
over my body to end the disease before the dis- 
ease ends me? It is a life and death race between 
my progress in thought-power and the progress 
of the disease. New Thought gives no satis- 
factory answer to this question. 

The problematical nature of the case becomes 
still more obvious when we remember that the 



PRACTICAL DEFECTS 93 

mind which according to New Thought espe- 
cially controls the body is the subconscious mind. 
The subconscious mind is the everlasting sink of 
all one's past evil as well as the repository of all 
one's past good (everlasting sink, that is, if the 
mind is everlasting). If this subconscious mind 
which is evil as well as good is the mind that es- 
pecially controls my body and if disease results 
only from error and evil in the mind, how is it 
possible for me ever to become perfectly healthy? 
This was pointed out earlier, but it will bear 
repetition. Surely New Thought, instead of be- 
ing, as it claims, an angel of hope to a diseased 
humanity, is a messenger of doom. It boasts of 
its optimism while unaware of its pessimism. 

As to the problem of the extent of the influ- 
ence of the mind over the body, that is a question 
for physicians, and physiologists, and psycholo- 
gists, and alienists to answer. In view of the 
above exposition it is not necessary to answer 
this question in order to form an intelligent es- 
timate of New Thought therapeutics. We may 
have sufficient evidence of mental influence both 
in the causing and in the curing of disease; we 
may gladly believe in this mental influence; and 
we may confidently give ourselves mental treat- 
ments ; and yet not make an extravagent appli- 
cation of principles which only contradict and 
annul one another when pushed to the extreme 
and transformed into wild vagaries. 

The third practical defect in New Thought 



94 NEW THOUGHT 

therapeutics reveals itself when the question is 
asked, Can the body affect the mind? Accord- 
ing to New Thought principles it cannot. This 
application of its principles is sometimes ex- 
pressly made. Have you a fit of the blues ? Do 
not blame your liver. "Blues" are mental. You 
never have the blues unless you invite them. 
The whole New Thought circle of ideas is con- 
gruous only with the conception of the passivity 
of the body under the power of the mind. Some 
of its expositors tell us that there is nothing in 
their principles inharmonious with the belief in 
a reflex influence of the body upon the mind. 
This is an unproved assertion and the critic re- 
spectfully begs leave to differ. 

Consequently the extent to which the body 
does affect and control the mind sets New 
Thought therapeutics at nought. What be- 
comes of the health-affirmation method of heal- 
ing? Or of the harmonizing-with-disease method 
of healing? Or of the idea that all bodily states 
are merely the expression of prior and causative 
mental states? 

It is unnecessary for this book to deal with 
the question of the influence of the body upon 
the mind. It will suffice merely to speak of the 
possibility of physical influence upon the mind. 
Common sense declares, rightly or wrongly, that 
this influence is extensive. There is a prevalent 
belief, for example, that impatience, irritability, 
despondency, and other disagreeable mental 



PRACTICAL DEFECTS 95 

states are the results of a disordered liver, of 
exhausted nerves, of insomnia, and so forth; and 
conversely that mental vigor, alertness, hopeful- 
ness, serenity, patience, light-hearted joy may 
be in part the result of prime physical condition. 

Furthermore, there is probably much truth in 
the argument that, since a mental state such as 
grief or fury is impossible apart from specific 
conditions of the blood and movements of the 
muscles, the body has a part in producing the 
grief or the fury. It is well-known that a man 
by certain movements of his fists, arms, facial 
muscles, eyeballs, and other parts of the body can 
deliberately work himself up into a passion or 
frenzy, quite impossible without this cooperation 
of the body. Movements of the body can also 
help to induce a happy and quiet frame of mind. 
If the mind can influence the body, there seems 
to be just as convincing evidence that the body 
can influence the mind. Indeed, it is generally 
felt that a significant element in the moral strug- 
gle of human life arises from the fierce conflict 
between the body with its passions and the mind 
with its ideals and its high purposes. A thera- 
peutical method that almost wholly ignores what 
seems to be practically a tremendous factor in 
the relation of the body to the mind is one-sided 
and untrustworthy. 

In conclusion, when we consider New Thought 
therapeutics from the practical point of view we 
see that it makes three assumptions : First, a 



96 NEW THOUGHT 

man can adequately control his own mind; Sec- 
ond, the mind completely controls the body and 
therefore a man can control his body by con- 
trolling his mind; and Third, the body has no 
influence over the mind or at most its influence is 
slight and negligible. The first two of these as- 
sumptions are unfounded in experience and are 
contradicted by experience. They are therefore 
serious practical defects, truly fatal flaws, in 
New Thought therapeutics. The third assump- 
tion may be in accord with the facts, but an im- 
mense array of evidence seems to discredit it. 
It is at best an hypothesis and should not be 
proclaimed as knowledge, infallible knowledge. 
And it is too precarious an hypothesis to con- 
stitute solid rock beneath the feet of a man 
wrestling for his very life. 

But to all reasoning the follower of New 
Thought answers : New Thought does heal, 
therefore New Thought is true. If a man is 
afflicted seriously with the New Thought obses- 
sion, especially if he has been healed within its 
charmed circle, you might as well cannonade Gib- 
raltar with apples and oranges as attempt to 
capture his assent by reasoning with him. He 
cannot be made to see the significance of the 
crucial fact that he himself admits that healing 
takes place under Christian Science (whose ne- 
gation method he condemns) ; that it is wrought 
by the more than doubtful relics of saints ; that 
it comes in answer to prayer to the living God 



PRACTICAL DEFECTS 97 

who is regarded as other than the petitioner's 
"real" self; and that it is obtained by a variety 
of "mind cures." If healing comes in connection 
with all these cults and methods which differ 
widely from one another ? how can the cure estab- 
lish the validity of any one of them? At most 
there is indicated some nucleus of truth common 
to all alike, but not a demonstration of the 
truth of any one cult or method entire to the dis- 
proof and discrediting of all the others. 



CHAPTER XIII 
LAW 

By "law" New Thought does not mean com- 
mand or decree or rule imposed by authority. 
The idea of authority is delusive. Authority im- 
plies the existence of two or more beings, one of 
whom has authority over the others. But since 
there is only one being existent, there can be no 
authority, unless one uses the word loosely and 
declares that the one and only being is authority 
unto itself. Theoretically New Thought repudi- 
ates as invalid what ordinary people would call 
laws human and divine. 

The word law is used in New Thought in an- 
other and quite legitimate way, namely, as de- 
noting regular method of operation in the uni- 
verse. Although New Thought often speaks of 
law as if self-executing, we may look upon this 
mode of speech perhaps as personification; a 
misleading personification, it is true; yet New 
Thought is not in this respect a greater sinner 
than science itself. 

Law is universal; there is no luck, or chance, 
or fate. No event is a mere happening. This 
is a universe of order. All events are links in a 
chain of cause and effect. The chain is never 
interrupted or broken. The forces of nature 

98 



LAW 99 

never in a single instance depart from one uni- 
form method of operation. 

This method is the method of perfect wisdom. 
It cannot be improved upon. It is so wise that 
the best interests of the universe would be vio- 
lated, if law were ever suspended or changed in 
the slightest degree. 

Law is also beneficent. It is preeminently the 
"Law of Love." It seems inexorably cruel and 
pitiless when we reflect upon the pain and suffer- 
ing that exist under its regime, but in reality 
law is kind and loving, tending only toward the 
welfare and perfection of all that is. Invariable 
law, infinitely wise and beneficent, is the true and 
only hope of humanity and therefore should be 
welcomed, not feared. 

As to the source of law or, in other words, as 
to the originator and administrator of invari- 
able method in the operation of the universe, 
little is said. Such terms as "divine method" 
and "divine constitution" are employed. Infi- 
nite spirit is said to have a "plan" and is 
represented both as being eternally self-ex- 
istent and as moving on steadily toward the 
perfect expression of itself in minds and matter. 
From these conceptions and from the idea that 
only spirit is, it is fair to infer that New 
Thought regards law as coeternal with 
spirit and as an element in the immutable con- 
stitution of the "Eternal Wholeness." 

The "All-Good" lives in complete accord with 



100 NEW THOUGHT 

law, that is, it never departs from its own 
method. The universal life of the "real man" is 
a harmony. "Harmony" is one of the chief gods 
in the New Thought Pantheon. Life consists 
of an infinitely intricate complex of "vibrations." 
In New Thought "vibration" and "vibrate" are 
words to conjure with. The universe is a vibra- 
tory system. We have already seen the use of 
these words in connection with the harmonizing- 
with-disease method of healing. All the vibra- 
tions of the "Universal Spirit of Wholeness" are 
in perfect concord, and together constitute a 
grand orchestral harmony. Universal life is a 
perfect harmony because it is in perfect accord 
with its own constitution as expressed in univer- 
sal law. 

The material universe is also under law. The 
"forces of nature" act under invariable law. 
Whether the operation of absolutely invariable 
law excludes miracles depends upon the definition 
of miracle. New Thought rejects popular ideas 
of miracle and all forms of supernaturalism as 
contrary to the idea of universal law. This re- 
pudiation of the supernatural is easy since New 
Thought does not need miracles. What need 
has a man for miracles if he believes that in ac- 
cordance with law it is at present theoretically 
possible and some day it will be actually reali- 
zable to create and disintegrate material forms 
by the sheer power of thought? As before 
stated, New Thought writers in citing biblical 



LAW 101 

miracles, especially those of Jesus, always as- 
sume them to be historical and see in them illus- 
trations and evidence of the truth and power of 
New Thought principles. New Thought not 
only does not need supernaturalism, it has no 
room for it. For all that is done, call it miracu- 
lous or not, is done by the "real man" or the 
"subjective man" in me and in you. 

New Thought applies its idea of law to peti- 
tionary prayer and bows it out with fine disdain. 
The very idea of an ignorant "mind" suggesting 
to the universal Intelligence that it change its 
procedure or do something it would not do if the 
request were not made! To admit such a possi- 
bility would, it is held, shatter law by an earth- 
quake at its very center. 

The material universe includes of course the 
human body. Human bodies are therefore under 
law. Moreover, since life under law is a harmony, 
since all occurrences under law are links in an in- 
finitely wise and beneficent series of cause and 
effect, bodies should always be in harmony with 
law. But New Thought admits that human 
bodies are often out of order, in a state of dis- 
harmony, and do not "vibrate" properly. There 
is a screw loose at this point in New Thought. 
The screw is supposed to be tightened by a ref- 
erence to "mind." Bodily disorder is not the 
fault of matter and its laws but of those miser- 
able offenders, called "minds." Matter of itself 
is not evil but good, and if minds only behaved 



102 NEW THOUGHT 

themselves and did not interfere with the 
forces of nature, matter, even in human bod- 
ies, would always be in perfect order. It is 
mind that muddles everything (including New 
Thought?). 

Observe how, after camping awhile on the 
high, far-stretching plain of monism in the rare 
and serene atmosphere of universal law where the 
only existent being operates by an invariable 
method, the New Thoughtist in order to escape 
a difficulty strikes tent and steals away to a 
quite different region, the low marshes of plural- 
ism, the habitat of that monster called the 
"mind." 

Considering now this matter of universal law 
in relation to the meddlesome, intractable mind, 
notice that the mind is said to "violate" law, ac- 
tually violate law, violate universal law. If 
law were a mandate issued by authority, its vio- 
lation would be conceivable. But in New 
Thought law is only regular method, it is the 
method of operation of Being. This method is 
invariable, absolutely universal. It is not and 
cannot be suspended for a single instant any- 
where in the universe. In fact, there is only one 
being and this being lives and works in perfect 
harmony with absolutely invariable law. And 
yet there is such a thing as the violation of law, 
departure from invariable method. How is it 
possible? It is not possible if the fundamental 
ideas of New Thought are true. Nevertheless 



LAW 103 

New Thought admits that law is violated and ex- 
tensively violated. 

The mind is an anarchist. It defies universal 
law. And yet this anarchist is only the expres- 
sion, utterance, mode of existence of the omnipo- 
tent, perfect, infinitely good spirit whose very 
constitution is universal law and harmony and 
concordant vibration ! Surely here the bottom 
drops out of the New Thought philosophy. 

The advocates of New Thought, however, will 
not let the mind go scot free from law. For the 
spirit takes cognizance of the mind's violation of 
law and becomingly adjusts itself to the situ- 
ation. The spirit's action in the case bears the 
two aspects of retribution and discipline. We 
are back again in the territory of law. It is in 
accordance with the laws of the universe that the 
spirit should instantly and exactly with infallible 
precision and with perfect love inflict retribution 
upon the erring mind when it violates law. The 
mental anarchist is not permitted to flaunt his 
red flag with impunity. The spirit or the forces 
of nature inflict strict retribution. This is the 
law and spirit always conforms to law. 

But the process which from one standpoint is 
retributive is from another angle disciplinary. 
The universal law is a method of progress and a 
method of love. Spirit adjusts itself with ut- 
most nicety and promptitude to all the follies 
and evils of the mind in precise conformity to 
law. This action of spirit is reformatory and 



104 NEW THOUGHT 

will finally bring the mind (every mind without 
exception) to conform freely, spontaneously and 
perfectly to the law or method of the spirit. 
Chaos is gradually disciplined into Cosmos. 

Even we cave dwellers who live on the "objec- 
tive plane" are able to gaze upon some of the 
foregoing ideas without blinking. This con- 
ception of the reign of universal law is not new. 
It is one of the common-places of modern science 
and it has profoundly influenced Christian the- 
ology. It is to be expected that any intellectual 
movement that claims to be so modern as to style 
itself the "New Thought" would make much of 
this ruling idea of modern thinking. Credit is 
due to the quasi-philosophy under review for its 
insistence upon the fact of law and for its effort 
to banish from men's minds the superstitious 
notions of chance and caprice and luck and ar- 
bitrariness and irrationality in the working of 
the universe. In this respect it is serving this 
generation beneficently and effectively in spite of 
the contradiction at its very core. Even a house 
divided against itself may stand for a time and 
have a useful mission. But at last, shore it up 
as one may, such a house cannot stand. 



CHAPTER XIV 
HAPPINESS 

Few things are so attractive to troubled and 
burdened hearts as the vision of unclouded happi- 
ness and perfect peace. New Thought holds up 
before men's longing eyes the ideal of perpet- 
ual joy, happy-hearted superiority to a dis- 
agreeable or sordid environment, a blessed eman- 
cipation from the tyranny of circumstance, an 
assured and reposeful mastery of all conditions, 
perfect rest amid all the unrest of the world, 
serene self-control in the presence of life's great 
tragedies, a quiet spirit calm and radiant amid 
all the worries, uncertainties, disappointments, 
and petty trials of daily life. The promises of 
New Thought, like the refreshing springs of the 
green oasis in the burning desert, well up to meet 
the lips of nervous, careworn, over-worked, trou- 
bled and suffering men and women. 

Why should I not be happy if the "real man in 
me" is the infinite and perfect spirit that creates 
and controls all things or of whom all things are 
only the expression? The "All-Good" is per- 
fectly benevolent, and is equally omniscient and 
omnipotent. How can anything untoward, un- 
desirable, lamentable, or tragic occur when noth- 
ing exists besides the loving, all-wise, and omnip- 
105 



106 NEW THOUGHT 

otent spirit? Further, this one and only being, 
perfectly good, wise, powerful, always works in 
accordance with law, law beneficent and immu- 
table. An impregnable rock surely ! What 
foundation for peace and joy could be so solid 
as this ? Contemplate it one moment ! There is 
only one being; this being is limitless in wisdom, 
power, and love, and its method of working is 
unvaryingly beneficent. If this is true, there is 
no place in human life for anything really evil or 
regrettable or ominous or, indeed, in any respect 
undesirable. There is nothing in the past to re- 
gret, nothing in the present to harm, nothing in 
the future to fear. We are all moving forward 
under the guidance and control of the inescap- 
able law of evolution. Nothing comes into our 
lives unless it is necessary for our ultimate wel- 
fare and perfection, and nothing stays any 
longer than it is needed. Existence is a paradise 
without even the least noxious serpent ; it is most 
precious ointment without a single fly. Such is 
the gospel of New Thought to a tired and trou- 
bled world longing and sighing for peace and 
comfort and power and all that constitutes hap- 
piness. 

But we must study the rationale of the case a 
little further. In the first place, the conscious 
mind has the royal prerogative of receiving or 
rejecting any influence from without that seeks 
admission. It is our privilege to choose what 
shall be the contents of our own minds. Our 



HAPPINESS 107 

minds live in an ocean of ideas, impressions, per- 
sonal influences that are pressing upon them 
from every side as water surrounds and presses 
upon a submerged object. But nothing can en- 
ter the mind except by the mind's voluntary per- 
mission. Or, to use another figure (it may be 
charity to call it a figure, for New Thought 
language concerning thoughts and influences is 
often amazingly materialistic), the mind lives in 
an atmosphere in which float myriads of very 
active emanations or particles from other minds. 
These emanations, which are thoughts or in- 
fluences, come flying or darting through the 
air. They come from every point of the com- 
pass and from great distances, and impinge upon 
one's mind. The latter may admit them or send 
them packing just as it lists. 

In the second place, happiness entirely de- 
pends upon the contents of one's mind. If your 
mind contains only thoughts of happiness, virtue, 
goodness, love, peace, joy, power, health, content- 
ment, and so forth, you are happy and cannot be 
unhappy. But if your mind, on the contrary, 
contains thoughts of misery, vice, badness, self- 
ishness, hate, envy, jealousy, disquietude, weak- 
ness, sickness, dissatisfaction, and sorrow, you 
are unhappy. 

From these two premises that the mind can 
admit or reject thoughts exactly as it pleases 
and that happiness depends wholly upon the 
character of your thoughts, the conclusion is 



108 NEW THOUGHT 

inevitable that perfect and perpetual happiness 
is within the power of any and every man. 

If you would be happy, you must in partic- 
ular realize your oneness or identity with infinite 
spirit; for spirit is limitless in its perfections 
and is infinitely peaceful and happy. To be- 
come and remain immersed in the God-conscious- 
ness, realizing that the real man in you is per- 
fectly happy, is to live submerged in an ocean of 
peace and joy. Unhappiness is impossible to 
the mind that fully opens itself or is "negative" 
to the "All-Good" and is at the same time and 
by that very process "positive" to and posi- 
tively against all that is evil and miserable. 

Are you sick? Think yourself as abounding 
in health and vigor. Are you fearful? Remind 
yourself that nothing can harm you except your 
own thoughts, and proceed to choose only 
thoughts of power and peace and good. Are 
you melancholy? Banish at once the miasma of 
despondency and let in the sunshine of bright 
imaginings and happy thoughts. Say to your- 
self: Life is sweetest music. My heart is gay. 
I sing and trill and carol for very joy. Are you 
misunderstood by your friends? Admit no 
thought of regret or sorrow, much less of resent- 
ment or bitterness. Send forth upon your 
friends, as winning forces, thoughts of truth 
about yourself and of kindness to them. Are 
you hated by enemies? Love them. Rejoice in 
the good that is in them. Remember that at 



HAPPINESS 109 

the center you and they are one and the same 
being, the one and only real man. Tell your- 
self: Their hatred is only a mistake on their 
part. When they come to know me better they 
will love me. Especially when they learn that I 
am they, they will love me. I send forth to 
them thought-forces to enlighten and win them. 
Are you losing money in business? Let no 
thought of uneasiness or repining enter your 
mind. That is the way to further loss. Rather 
recall that all events take place in strict accord- 
ance with law and law is invariably beneficent. 
You may be traveling toward wealth by the 
circuitous route of seeming failure. But what- 
ever is is best. 

Above all, whatever happens to you or to your 
loved ones, do not resist. Instead, "vibrate" 
with everything. Resistance brings friction. 
Friction involves disquiet and loss of peace. 
When peace goes, power goes ; power to recu- 
perate or to acquire or to enjoy. Since friction 
thus brings unhappiness, beware of friction and 
the resistance that produces it. Does any per- 
son, event, or thing seem hostile to you? Re- 
sistance will only give him or it added power 
over you. Resistance is therefore virtually sur- 
render. Love your enemies, whether these ene- 
mies are persons, events, or things, and you 
change them into friends ; and when they thus 
become your friends, they will enhance your hap- 
piness. 



110 NEW THOUGHT 

Whatever happens, accept it as the best thing 
for you and for your loved ones. All things are 
under law. The working of universal law has 
brought it about, and since law is beneficent, the 
event is beneficent also. Therefore rejoice in 
apparent misfortune, exult in what seems trag- 
edy, be peaceful, contented, satisfied, happy, un- 
der all conceivable conditions. "All" is good, 
and nothing outside of "the All" can touch you, 
because there is nothing, either good or evil, out- 
side of "the All." 

This is the New Thought way of putting the 
old saying that it is worth a thousand pounds a 
year to look on the bright side of things. This 
sunny optimism of New Thought is glitteringly 
attractive and is one of its strongest features. 
For moping and repining and complaining are 
not in favor with most people. This sursum 
corda, this call to joy and peace and confidence, 
this summons to mastery and victory, rings out 
like the peal of marriage bells. It comes upon 
the hot, fever-laden air of the world like a fresh, 
bracing breeze from the hills. It is a tonic to 
mind and body, and is doing this weary old 
world much good. What a pity it is that men 
with such an angel's song of peace and gladness 
should ever sing another tune ! But, alas ! the 
repertoire of New Thought includes laments and 
dirges. After all New Thought has its devil. 
The reader is by this time well-acquainted with 
this devil and knows that it is the "mind." In 



HAPPINESS 111 

fact there is a pair of devils, the conscious and 
the subconscious minds. The diabolical minds 
are constantly running amuck among the flowers 
and bowers and manifold beauties of paradise. 
And the problem is how to be happy in spite of 
the dark ways and heathenish tricks of the mind. 
This is a difficult problem because happiness is 
impossible if the mind does not behave itself. 
The magnificent promises of New Thought are 
conditioned upon the perfection of the mind 
and their fulfillment is doled out only in pro- 
portion to the progress of the mind toward per- 
fection. 

Everything hinges upon a man's control of 
his own mind. New Thought advocates often 
speak as if it were the easiest thing in the world 
to exclude all thoughts and feelings of pain and 
heartache and longing and regret and pity and 
sympathy and sorrow and anger and indignation 
besides all the restless feelings that arise from sex 
and temperament and the complex social rela- 
tions — to say nothing about pride, envy, covet- 
ousness, hatred, sensuality and all the rest of 
the devil's brood. And what about the difficulty 
of keeping the mind positively occupied with 
nothing but correct and good thoughts of every 
description? We may well remark again that 
it is no wonder that so many disciples of New 
Thought find that the harvest does not corre- 
spond to the seed-sowing of hope and expectation. 
And what do their prophets do to help them in 



112 NEW THOUGHT 

their disappointment and discouragement? They 
merely remind them of New Thought principles 
often couched in beautiful poetic language, point 
to shining examples of the successful application 
of these principles, and exhort them to start 
again and persevere, persevere. Surely a poor 
gospel after all for weak and tempted and bur- 
dened humanity. 

Again, the subconscious mind is an insuper- 
able obstacle to the quest for happiness. New 
Thought says : If you would be happy, all you 
have to do is to admit correct, righteous, happy 
thoughts, and reject all incorrect, evil, and un- 
happy thoughts. But according to its own de- 
scriptions of the subconscious mind nothing that 
once gets into that mind can ever be expelled. 
Yes, but happiness is a matter of consciousness. 
That which is in the subconsciousness can there- 
fore make no difference to one's happiness. But 
what if subconsciousness affects consciousness? 
New Thought declares that the conscious life is 
largely the welling-up of our subconscious life 
into consciousness. It also tells us that the sub- 
conscious mind teems with the whole black list of 
thoughts that are destructive of happiness. 
How, then, can the conscious mind be free from 
these thoughts that blight happiness and banish 
peace ? The truth is that New Thought unwit- 
tingly exhibits the subconsciousness as the mar- 
plot of its whole scheme for the fulness of peace 
and plenty and power and joy. 



HAPPINESS 113 

New Thought reaches the same suicidal con- 
clusion in another way and hangs itself by the 
rope of its doctrine of "expression." The inner 
and invisible is always seeking and gaining ex- 
pression or embodiment in body and possessions 
and circumstances. But the immensely larger 
part of the inner and invisible in individual life 
is the parti-colored subconscious mind. Its 
manifestation will necessarily be as variegated 
as itself. New Thought ideas consequently, car- 
ried to their legitimate conclusion, make a life of 
complete happiness absolutely impossible to any 
human being. 

Christianity too offers men happiness. Jesus 
said, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He left 
peace as a precious legacy to his disciples : 
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto 
you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. 
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
fearful." (John 14:27.) He told them that 
his joy was to be in them and that their joy was 
to be "made full" and that no one could take 
their joy from them. The Christian's peace is a 
"peace that passeth all understanding." It is a 
peace that abides. It is not a few quiet, shaded 
pools situated here and there along the rushing 
river of life ; it is in the very flow and movement 
of the river. It is not the peace of the cool even- 
ing's stillness after the hot day's hard work is 
done, it is the rest of spirit while bearing the 



114* NEW THOUGHT 

burden and heat of the day. Christ's peace is 
not rest from the yoke, but rest under the yoke, 
heartVease even while dragging toilingly at 
the load of life. 

The Christian joy inheres in the soul as its 
perfume in a rose. It shines like a lamp within 
a globe, irradiating and beautifying the soul. 
The Christian's peace and joy is utterly separate 
from callous indifference to trouble ; it has noth- 
ing in common with the factitious repose arising 
from the denial of the existence of evil ; it stands 
in sharp contradistinction to the shallow happi- 
ness of the man who dare not sympathize with 
the sufferer or be indignant at the wrongdoer 
or permit any ploughshare of elemental human, 
passion to make deep furrows in his soul or bare 
his spirit to the sharpness of any sword of an- 
guish, because such experience involves "friction" 
and friction prevents or destroys power and 
peace and joy. 

According to Christianity no man ought, in 
view of the sin and woe of the human race, to, 
desire to escape every pang. "Sorrowful yet al- 
ways rejoicing" is the true keynote. The ideal 
man was the man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief as well as the man in whom dwelt the full- 
ness of joy and peace. Man is made for happi- 
ness, but he is also made for love. And love 
suffers in a world of sin and sorrow, suffers by 
sympathy with the loved ones who sin and suffer. 
Even God suffers. "The Lamb slain from the 



HAPPINESS 115 

foundation of the world" is the history of his 
heart. 

But, though Christianity calls upon men to 
suffer, it nevertheless promises happiness within 
the soul. To a man surrendered to God and man 
in loving self-sacrifice it makes little difference 
what accompaniment so-called Fortune plays ; he 
will ever sing in his heart the song of heavenly 
joy. It did not disturb Paul's peace because he 
endured so many afflictions for the sake of Christ 
and the Church. In the inner dungeon at Phil- 
ippi Paul and Silas at midnight sang praises to 
God. The apostle declared that he rejoiced in 
his sufferings for those whom he had led to 
Christ. And a modern missionary, whose friends 
were attempting to dissuade him from service in 
Africa, replied, "If Christ wants me to be a hid- 
den foundation-stone lying unseen in an African 
grave, I am content." What can disturb the 
peace and joy of men like them who drink deeply 
from the sacred chalice of divine love? Indeed, 
the suffering itself, when it is for love's sake, 
brings to a man happiness peculiar and un- 
fathomable. 

Christianity, furthermore, gives full recogni- 
tion to the reality of sorrow and trouble and 
evil. It does not stultify itself by acknowl- 
edging and denying the existence of evil in al- 
most the same breath as New Thought does. 
But while recognizing evil as a fact, a terrible 
reality, and admitting the presence of mysteries 



116 NEW THOUGHT 

insoluble in this world, the Christian religion 
breathes peace upon the spirit and inspires hope 
and courage and strength so that no man is so 
truly and profoundly happy as the thorough- 
going Christian. He believes in God the Father. 
He is sure that "all things work together for 
good to them that love God." He believes that 
he is the immortal son of the everlasting Father 
who has a plan for the life of his child and has 
all eternity in which to carry it out. This pres- 
ent short life is but the prologue to the endless 
epic of existence; it is but the first scene of an 
everlasting drama ; it is but the orchestral music 
before the rising of the curtain that hides from 
our view the stage of the eternal world. We 
dwell in the mists here, thick mists sometimes, 
but they are not the chilling vapors that precede 
an oncoming night that shall darken our souls 
forever, but rather they are the mists that pre- 
cede the sunrise, the dawning of the everlasting 
day. And the Christian can be calm and repose- 
ful and full of a great and inextinguishable joy 
because he is sure of God, of God whose names are 
Righteousness and Love. 

No man need turn away from Christ the real 
Light of the world to follow after the phosphores- 
cent gleams that float over the treacherous 
marshes of a quagmire philosophy in order to 
have the fullness of peace and joy. Christian 
hymns testify abundantly to the real Christian 
experience. If one seeks to select a representa- 



HAPPINESS 117 

tive utterance, he is embarrassed by his riches. 
Perhaps the following verses may represent hun- 
dreds of others like them as they certainly re- 
cord the blessedness of the life of those who truly 
follow the Master who gave us the Beatitudes. 

"In heavenly love abiding, 

No change my heart shall fear; 
And safe is such confiding, 

For nothing changes here. 
The storm may rage without me ; 

My heart may low be laid ; 
But God is round about me, 

And can I be dismayed? 

"Wherever He may guide me, 
No want shall turn me back ; 
My Shepherd is beside me, 
And nothing can I lack: 
His wisdom ever waketh, 
His sight is never dim ; 
He knows the way He taketh, 
And I will walk with Him. 

"Green pastures are before me, 

Which yet I have not seen ; 
Bright skies will soon be o'er me, 

Where the dark clouds have been : 
My hope I cannot measure; 

My path to life is free ; 
My Savior has my treasure, 

And He will walk with me." 



CHAPTER XV 
GOOD AND EVIL 

At the risk of some repetition it is desirable 
to devote a few pages exclusively to the topic 
of this chapter. New Thought ideas on the sub- 
ject of good and evil are a puzzling maze. The 
bewildering confusion arises from the attempt to 
reconcile hard facts with the fundamental dic- 
tum that the "All" is absolutely good. 

On the one hand New Thought frequently ad- 
mits the existence of what are commonly called 
evils, moral, social, mental, and physical; and on 
the other hand the existence of evil is most 
grudgingly granted, toned down, obscured by 
explanations that do not explain, and at times 
denied outright. 

Let us follow a few threads in the tangled 
skein. In the first place, it is asserted that all 
things are good. Things in themselves are not 
and cannot be evil. If evil exists, it consists in 
the wrong use of things ; they become evil only 
by being misused. To this position no Chris- 
tian believer in a perfect and benevolent Creator 
should object. The Bible says, "And God saw 
everything that he had made, and, behold, it 
was very good" (Gen. 1: 31). New Thought 
holds to the goodness of things because things 
118 



GOOD AND EVIL 119 

are in some undefined sense or other included in 
the "All-Good." 

In the second place, as already stated, the 
perversion of things is evil. Common sense and 
Christianity indorse this position also. But if 
the central idea of New Thought is true, there is 
no possibility of this evil perversion of things. 
Who does the perverting? Things do not misuse 
themselves. All that exists is good and is one, 
and the "All" is infinitely wise and good spirit. 
How then can misuse and abuse of things arise? 

We men are the offenders. We men, however, 
in our "real" selves are the infinitely good spirit. 
It is evident that those who misuse things are in 
some way radically other than the "All." New 
Thought is compelled by the facts of life to 
abandon its monism and speak as if there were a 
genuine and highly significant ontological dis- 
tinction between infinite spirit and individual 
human minds. In this way it reaches the idea of 
evil. Sometimes it proclaims monism and denies 
evil; at other times it proclaims pluralism and 
affirms evil. Now it would erect an edifice of life 
and health and happiness and morals on the one 
basis, now on the other basis, and still again on 
no one knows which basis. Its writings are a 
medley of incongruous assertions and exhorta- 
tions that are hopelessly at variance with one 
another. 

In the third place, there is no evil outside of 
the mind. The mind takes the wrong attitude 



120 NEW THOUGHT 

toward spirit, toward other minds, and toward 
things. The mind takes this wrong attitude 
either wilfully or ignorantly. Occasionally the 
New Thought teacher has much to say about a 
weak or a perverse will and gets pretty close to 
a true idea of moral evil. He finds this very 
dangerous ground, however, for a man who be- 
lieves that the sum total of being is absolutely 
good and he is sure to retreat and make state- 
ments implying that there is no real moral evil 
after all. 

Usually the mind is represented as taking the 
wrong attitude, not in perverse wilfulness, but in 
ignorance. Sin is due only to lack of informa- 
tion. This must be so. For no one would know- 
ingly injure himself; and, since other people are 
identical with his real self, he would never know- 
ingly injure others. Notice in passing that we 
have here the same confusion of the impersonal, 
universal, real man with the personal, individual 
"mind" represented by the personal pronoun 
which we observed once before in another con- 
nection. 

The New Thoughtist, like the Christian Scien- 
tist, seems to think that he escapes the terrible 
problem of evil or that it becomes attenuated 
almost to a shadow by calling it ignorance. Evil 
is said to be only an error. But is not an error 
an evil, at least in the intellectual sphere? Are 
not many so-called errors, moreover, loathsome, 
monstrous, destructive? Do we save ourselves 



GOOD AND EVIL 121 

from them by a euphemism? Do we lessen their 
power to defile and curse when we put a different 
and less repellent label on them? New Thought 
and Christian Science say that "All" is good, and 
they think that they consistently hold to this 
fundamental dogma just because they refuse to 
call a spade a spade. Instead of saying "evil" 
they say "ignorance," "mistake," "error," "par- 
tial expression," and lo ! there is no evil and truly 
the "All" is good! Whatever you call it, the 
horrid, accursed thing is in human hearts and 
lives just the same. A cesspool is just as foul 
whether you call it a cesspool or a means of 
sanitation. 

When New Thought declares that the only 
existent being is infinitely wise and then affirms 
that the error in human life is inconceivably enor- 
mous in the total and then says that the preva- 
lence of error is due to the fact that the infinitely 
wise and only being only partially expresses it- 
self, and yet the being is not in error but only 
the "mind," and yet the mind, crammed with 
dangerous and horrible errors, is only the being's 
expression of itself and that therefore even the 
most frightful evils are not positively but only 
negatively evil, when New Thought talks in this 
fashion, as it usually does, it is but a "Job's 
comforter" for the poor fellows that are smitten 
from sole to crown with painful boils, physical 
or moral, and are passing their wretched days 
on the dunghill. 



122 NEW THOUGHT 

In the fourth place, New Thought usually 
teaches that evil or error is but temporary. It 
is temporary because by the law of evolution 
knowledge must increase. Evil is only for a time 
because it is simply limitation, and by the proc- 
ess of evolution, as New Thought interprets it, 
limitation of every sort is gradually diminishing, 
for the infinite spirit is moving on toward perfect 
self-expression. Evil is transient also because it 
is a means of education. Great stress is laid 
upon this aspect of evil, perhaps because to the 
New Thoughtist it seems to offer an open door 
to escape from the problem of evil, or at any rate 
to lessen its magnitude. It is even asserted that 
men make "mistakes," knowing that they will 
profit by them, and this position is condoned. 
This is tantamount to the maxim, "Let us do 
evil that good may come" ; the apostle Paul adds, 
"whose damnation is just." Few New Thought 
writers thus carry the consequences of their ideas 
to the very last ditch, and yet all of them imply 
this conclusion. And since all evil is educa- 
tional, it is transitory ; for when the education is 
completed, the means of education will dis- 
appear. 

In the fifth place, there is no such thing as 
evil. Evil is only appearance, not reality. It 
is not real, but only a shadow; it is not positive, 
but merely negative; it is not essential badness 
of heart, but only ignorance; it is not a wicked 
choice of that which a man knows to be wrong, 



GOOD AND EVIL 123 

it is instead a mere fantasy, only the product of 
disordered senses and incorrect thinking. 

Such expressions are surprising when one's 
eyes are fixed upon the facts of consciousness and 
conduct. They are not so surprising, however, 
when uttered by men blinded to the facts of life 
by a metaphysical theory concerning ultimate 
reality. Men cannot dwell continually upon the 
idea that there is only one being and that this 
being is absolutely good without belittling the 
evil of human life, minimizing its guilt, losing the 
sense of sin, and regarding so-called evil as the 
temporary, unpleasant road to goodness and per- 
fection. 

But if moral evil is what the human conscience 
declares it to be and particularly if evil is what 
the individual and social conscience as enlight- 
ened and developed under the teachings and influ- 
ence of Christ has always felt it to be, then it is 
an incalculable harm to men individually and 
collectively to minimize the badness of evil and 
virtually to explain it away altogether. 

It is far better that the painful truth of the 
"exceeding sinfulness of sin" should be acutely 
felt. To make men feel, on the contrary, that 
moral evil is at the worst a venial offense; that 
it is only a wart on the skin, not a cancer eating 
at the vitals ; that it is a mere mistake, simply, so 
to speak, catching a crab as one rows along the 
stream of life; to make men feel that at heart 
they are as pure and good and blessed as God 



124 NEW THOUGHT 

himself, that in fact they are God, is to open 
wide the flood gates for evil to rush through and 
devastate human life. 

The tendency of men to indulge fleshly lusts 
or greed of gold or passion for position and 
power is so strong that it is immeasurably peril- 
ous to remove legitimate barriers to their selfish- 
ness. New Thought teaches that licentious lust 
and all abominable passions are only on the sur- 
face of life, they do not issue from your "real" 
self, at heart they do not belong to you or affect 
you. True, it will be a mistake for you to in- 
dulge these propensities, but, if you do, the law 
of evolution, the universal law that is infinitely 
wise and beneficent in its operations, will rectify 
the results of these "mistakes" both in your own 
life and in the lives of those you seem, but only 
seem, to injure. Vile lusts are only limitations, 
the partial expressions of perfect purity ; cruelty, 
hate, malignity, and jealousy are the partial ex- 
pressions of perfect kindness, generosity, and 
love. And it is because these passions are only a 
partial expression of goodness that they seem to 
be evil. All this sort of thing about which the 
unseeing world makes so much ado is only a 
superficial and temporary phase of your experi- 
ence. Some day you will outgrow these mis- 
takes by becoming further enlightened. The in- 
dulgence in what the uninitiated multitude calls 
dreadful and dangerous passions will really prove 
to be an ascension, not perhaps directly, but by 



GOOD AND EVIL 125 

a sort of spiral path to the plane of light and 
life and knowledge and goodness. That which 
is misnamed evil is the means of moral culture. 
You go to school to vice to learn virtue ; selfish- 
ness is your tutor to train and perfect you in 
love. 

This is in part the present writer's phrasing 
of New Thought doctrine. Nevertheless it pre- 
sents strictly and without any exaggeration the 
outrageously immoral and dangerous substance 
of certain favorite New Thought ideas. 

Christianity on the contrary proclaims uncom- 
promisingly the reality and the enormity of 
moral evil and calls upon men to repent. It 
tells men the naked and humiliating truth about 
themselves. It awakens conscience until the 
clarion call is heard within the soul summoning 
the sinner to forsake evil and turn to goodness 
and to God. It also woos the man from evil to 
goodness by the tender and profound appeals of 
the divine love, especially as revealed in the cross 
of Christ. Christianity offers the indispensable 
help of an almighty Savior and Friend to 
aid the sinner in repenting and in reforming while 
at the same time it rouses all the forces for good 
in the man's nature to work with God for the 
cleansing and transformation of heart and life. 
Its standard of goodness is the moral perfection 
of God himself as exhibited in the life of Jesus, 
the elder Brother, and the sympathizing Helper 
of every man. It is in the sphere of personal 



1M NEW THOUGHT 

relations that men are moved and helped, and it 
is just here that Christianity meets and helps 
men. 

To exchange all this for the idea that I am the 
good God and have no evil or need at the heart 
of me, and that seeming evil is only the limitation 
which my infinitude undergoes and is but the 
partial expression of my limitless perfection as 
I move on steadily and surely from personal to 
impersonal existence, and that, being under the 
law of evolution, I need not worry over my "mis- 
takes" — to exchange the Christian conception 
and experience for New Thought's superficial 
travesty of the sublime conceptions of law and 
evolution and optimism and the immanence and 
infinitude of God is to exchange gold for tinsel, 
and diamonds of the first water for paste imita- 
tions. 



CHAPTER XVI 
NEW THOUGHT ETHICS 

The last chapter laid the foundation for the 
study of New Thought ethics. We shall first of 
all consider the connection between the New 
Thought idea of moral evil and its conceptions of 
being and of law. 

There is only one being. The only being is 
infinitely wise, powerful, and good. It lives and 
acts invariably in perfect conformity to beneficent 
law. If this is true, then every expression of 
the only being is the action of perfect being in 
perfect conformity to perfect law. Even though 
any particular expression of being is a partial 
one, yet it is nevertheless the action of perfect 
being in perfect conformity to perfect law. The 
material universe is one such expression. Each 
human mind, including intellect, and feeling, and 
will, is such an expression. Each human life, 
physical and intellectual and moral, is an ex- 
pression of perfect being that always acts in per- 
fect conformity to perfect law. 

There is therefore no evil, no moral evil. The 

individual mind cannot be really evil. New 

Thought does not hesitate to teach this. If we 

have any right to talk about evil at all, it is not 

127 



128 NEW THOUGHT 

because minds and their doings are positively bad, 
but only because they are negatively bad. Evil 
is only a lack of something; it is incompleteness 
and incompleteness that is a natural and inevi- 
table stage in our progress toward perfection. 
It is the stage of partial ignorance and partial 
knowledge. There is manifestly no room here 
for the fundamental moral instincts of mankind. 
Indeed we are sometimes expressly told that re- 
gret for our past misdeeds is foolish. Repent- 
ance exposes the mind and body to weakness and 
sickness. It is harmful because it produces fric- 
tion ; and "friction" is one of the nightmares of 
New Thought. Fear is man's worst enemy, even 
the fear arising from the consciousness of guilt. 
Remorse is folly. Conscience is the great de- 
ceiver and the great bully. How many degrees 
the needle of the New Thought compass is de- 
flected from the magnetic pole of truth by the 
pantheistic iron in the hull of the ship! 

Now since sin is only ignorance, the way out 
is the path of knowledge. Let there be light. 
Show men their errors and they will forsake them 
both in theory and in practice. It is impossible 
for a rational being to live irrationally. A man 
cannot knowingly act an error or live a lie. Per- 
fect goodness comes of necessity with perfect 
knowledge. The tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil is the real tree of life, and in the day 
in which thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
live. 



NEW THOUGHT ETHICS 129 

But how shall one acquire knowledge? Look 
within. Know thyself. Christian and Buddhis- 
tic sacred writings, Emerson's Essays, Walt 
Whitman's poetry, New Thought lectures and 
books, and other external sources of knowledge 
are helpful toward enlightenment, but after all 
the royal road to learning and consequently to 
moral perfection is to look within. But what is 
there within ? The universal spirit, the real man, 
which is omniscient. One may well relegate to 
a second place all the wisdom of the ages that is 
to be found in books, if, by looking within, the 
very pages of omniscience are open to view. 
New Thought lays great stress upon the idea 
that knowledge of how to live is accessible to any 
man because in every case the real man is the 
universal spirit and in looking at the universal 
spirit he is only looking at himself. This is un- 
commonly like sleight of hand. The ignorant 
mind looks at the omniscient real man and in so 
doing is looking at itself! Ignorance gazes 
upon knowledge and beholds itself as in a mir- 
ror! This is still another instance of the fal- 
lacy of confounding the individual self with the 
"real" self. 

We saw in an earlier chapter that the God- 
consciousness, the realization that you are God 
or infinite spirit, is the secret of knowledge. 
And since knowledge makes moral evil impossible, 
the consciousness of God, the living the "real" 
life, the realizing sense that you are the only, 



130 NEW THOUGHT 

the universal, the infinite being is the path to 
perfect goodness. 

Let us see how this is supposed to work practi- 
cally. Let a man meditate long and deeply 
upon the central truth of New Thought that 
there is only one being until he realizes it vividly 
and profoundly. He thus comes to know that he 
is the All. But if he is the All, then, in opposing 
the All, he is opposing himself and injuring him- 
self. (Note that the real man can suffer injury; 
in other connections New Thought denies this.) 
But no man will wittingly injure himself. It 
follows that when a man gains a clear vision of 
his oneness with the All, or, better, that he is the 
All, it is impossible for him wilfully to rebel 
against the All and its laws. Rather will he love 
the All. It is easy to love one's self. When I 
know that my real self is the All and especially 
the "All-Good," I shall love the Eternal Whole- 
ness and love it spontaneously. Nothing else 
but love to God is possible to me when I have 
gazed long and steadily within and see that I 
am God. 

When I see that I am God, I shall see also 
that there is no one above me who gives laws to 
me. Moral authority is null and void. There 
is no such thing as a valid command. All 
authority is in myself, which is equal to saying 
there is no such thing as authority. It is a deg- 
radation to think of obeying anyone. The idea 
of obedience is a superstition, for it is nonsense 



NEW THOUGHT ETHICS 131 

to talk about obeying yourself. But that is 
the only obedience possible, since there is only 
one being and you are that being. 

New Thought here rides its monism desper- 
ately hard. Notwithstanding^ at other times we 
find the saddle on a very different horse, and read 
of the mind being "open" to and "positive" to 
the real man, and resisting the infinite spirit, 
and receiving help and power from the spirit of 
wholeness, and so forth. 

Again, by looking within at my real self I come 
to understand, that since there is only one being, 
my fellowmen are equally with myself that one 
and only being. In other words, all men are my 
real self. If I hate and injure them I de facto 
hate and injure myself. No one, however, can 
knowingly injure himself; therefore the man of 
knowledge will not and cannot injure any fellow- 
being. And when I realize that my fellows are 
my real self, I shall love them, simply because I 
cannot help loving myself. 

Love and knowledge are the great words in 
New Thought ethics. They are the two foci of 
its ellipse. The perfect life is the life of love. 
This life is practicable for all men ; for knowledge 
necessitates love, and knowledge is to be had for 
the looking at one's self. Could any scheme of 
practical morality be simpler and easier than 
this of New Thought? At last we have a short 
cut to perfection! 

It should not fail to be noticed that in New 



132 NEW THOUGHT 

Thought love is always in the last analysis self- 
love, and, so far as its ethics can be classified, 
they are utilitarian. The cardinal idea is that 
injury of others is injury to self and doing good 
to others is doing good to self. Its love is theo- 
retically nothing but self-love. This is true at 
any rate so long as it is under the spell of pan- 
theistic monism. 

New Thought, however, often appeals from 
Richard drunk to Richard sober. While intoxi- 
cated with pantheism, it is all for self-love, but 
at other times, it denounces selfishness unspar- 
ingly. 

But how is a reprehensible selfishness possible? 
It is connected with individuality. And here 
pluralism comes in with a rush. This is ever the 
case with New Thought. While monism holds 
the territory and reigns serenely over its wide 
and glorious domain, suddenly a tidal wave of 
pluralism rushes in resistlessly upon the fair 
landscape and engulfs it. In New Thought the 
"mind" is always the skeleton in the closet ; it 
is the ghost that refuses to be laid. 

Proceeding now to the consideration of in- 
dividuality and selfishness we learn that men are 
individual persons. They can think of one an- 
other and act for or against one another. And 
observe that "another" means an other, not self. 
The individual now is the self; though not the 
"real" self, yet for the practical purposes of 
New Thought ethics it is the self. Tom is Tom 



NEW THOUGHT ETHICS 133 

and Dick is Dick and Harry is Harry. And 
because they are three individuals they can pull 
three different ways at once. Now this is selfish- 
ness ; and it is evil, moral evil. Surely New 
Thought is here "not far from the kingdom" of 
ethical truth. But just as Bunyan's pilgrim 
discovered that there was a short route to hell 
from the very gate of heaven, so New Thought 
falls back from this high place into the abyss of 
the immoral. Tom, Dick, and Harry are not 
after all to be blamed very much for their selfish- 
ness, and when they have become New Thought- 
ists they must not indulge vain regrets over their 
past contrariness. It is only a matter of igno- 
rance and enlightenment. They selfishly pull 
three different ways because the fact of individu- 
ality looms up too large before them. If they 
perceived the truth that they are in reality only 
one being, they would pull together in harmoni- 
ous cooperation. Selfishness, the root of all the 
suffering and wretchedness in the world, is in- 
separable from individuality. It cannot be eradi- 
cated except by the suppression of individuality. 
Individuality for this reason is decidedly under 
the New Thought taboo. The ideal existence is 
not personal but impersonal ; not individual, but 
universal. Life will reach the zenith of purity 
and glory when the universal spirit shall live only 
in the universal or spirit mode and all individuals 
shall have become absorbed in universal being. 
One cannot help wondering why the universal 



134 NEW THOUGHT 

ever individuated itself at all. It seems like the 
self-degradation of infinitely perfect being. Is 
it not merely a plunge into the depths just for 
the sake of climbing slowly up to the heights 
again ? 

As to the dynamics of New Thought ethics, 
no special need of power is indicated and cer- 
tainly no power outside of yourself is to be ex- 
pected for a single instant. Not power but 
knowledge is essential to success. New Thought- 
ists, like Christians, have the benefit of the ex- 
ample of Jesus and they make some use of it. 
They also seek help in the ethical life from all 
the great and good men in the past and present. 
In this respect many Christians could learn wis- 
dom from the followers of New Thought. They 
use the Christian Scriptures not a little. They 
feed their souls most of all in the verdant, flowery 
pastures of New Thought literature. 

Christian ethics stand out in marked contrast 
to the ethics of New Thought. Christianity 
does not trifle with dynamite by playing fast and 
loose with the idea and fact of moral evil. It 
believes in the great intuitions of the human soul. 
Truth is writ large in the vast race-feelings of 
mankind ; of them God might say, "Behold, with 
how large letters I have written unto you with 
my own hand." The moral intuitions, are, ac- 
cording to Christian ethics, the clear, limpid 
springs in which truth wells up into our con- 
sciousness from the deeps of the divine mind : and 



NEW THOUGHT ETHICS 135 

New Thought would muddy these clear springs 
of knowledge. The primitive intuitions consti- 
tute God's fundamental revelation; they are his 
directest and most immediate utterances to the 
human soul. In them we come face to face with 
the Eternal Reason. They are the root of all 
human reason, faith, and knowledge, the very 
taproot of both the intellectual and moral life. 

The human conscience, whether of the Chris- 
tian or of other men, gives the lie direct to the 
claim of New Thought that men never sin against 
the light, that moral evil is ignorance and as 
such is not to be condemned. Men know that 
they deliberately violate true principles of action 
and of being, and they condemn themselves for 
doing so. Men know that they often antagonize 
their own highest interests, and wilfully and 
maliciously seek to injure others although they 
know that their wrongdoing will some day come 
down like a boomerang upon their own pate. 
Christianity agrees with common sense in recog- 
nizing all this, and it calls this wilful wrong- 
doing evil, and, when viewed as the transgression 
of the law of God, calls it sin — sin, unnatural, 
abnormal, irrational, ruinous, damnable, the 
worst conceivable thing in the universe. 

Christianity, further, is altogether out of sym- 
pathy with the New Thought idea of the essential 
evil of individuality. It fervently believes in 
the individual life. "What shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul?" is its question and its 



136 NEW THOUGHT 

challenge. Its Founder taught that there is joy 
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. His 
gospel is the gospel of the "whosoever." The 
ideal of Christianity combines in perfect balance 
the individual and the social. It would develop 
each distinct and separate person, not blot out 
his personality. Instead of bidding men hope for 
absorption into Nirvana as their highest goal, 
it teaches them to follow him in whose Father's 
house are many mansions. Christianity, while 
working for the perfecting of the individual, is 
also looking and laboring for the kingdom of God, 
a vast and glorious social system of perfected 
personal beings living together in perfect har- 
mony and love. 

Christian morality is reenforced by the Chris- 
tian religion, and "the gospel is the power of 
God unto salvation." All the example, precept, 
sentiment, and rhetoric of New Thought does not 
furnish moral power enough for the needs of the 
ethical life. New Thought cannot satisfy the 
deepest moral needs of men because it ignores the 
reality of the profoundest moral instincts or de- 
nies them utterly. Christianity gives full recog- 
nition to them and offers to weak and sinning 
men the very power of God, of God who is not 
a man's own real self. 



CHAPTER XVII 
NEW THOUGHT AND RELIGION 

Whether New Thought is religious or not, 
depends upon what religion is. There are highly 
elastic definitions of religion. It is, for example, 
a feeling, a temper, an aspiration, an attitude, 
a being spiritual, and so forth. But the idea of 
religion, as held almost universally in all ages, 
involves the existence of two parties, the one 
human and the other not human or at least not 
now living an incarnate human life. 

But the keystone of the New Thought arch is 
the dogma: All is One, One is All. Or, to 
state it more clearly: There is only one being, 
and that being is your real self. Now, it is plain 
that if there is only one party and you are that 
party, religion as historically conceived is an im- 
possibility, and the very conception of religion 
which has been one of the greatest factors in the 
intellectual and moral life of man is untrue. 

New Thought uses some of the leading religi- 
ous words. It speaks of revelation, but means 
by it the unveiling of yourself as spirit to your- 
self as mind, the method of revelation being intro- 
spection. It speaks of communion with God, but 
understands by it conversing with yourself. Its 
137 



138 NEW THOUGHT 

communing with God is a monologue ; its beatific 
vision is the rapt contemplation of self. New 
Thought uses the term atonement, but only as 
signifying the harmony of your lower, personal, 
individual self with your higher, impersonal, and 
universal self. The word salvation is used, but 
the only divine Savior a man can have is his own 
divine self, often referred to as "the Christ with- 
in." Moral government is wholly self-govern- 
ment. The almost universal conception of obedi- 
ence as being and doing what another commands 
is degrading and weakening. Indeed the worst 
possible evil is the surrender of the right to 
govern yourself. New Thought sometimes 
speaks favorably of religion and seems to regard 
itself as religious, but it discountenances adher- 
ence to any one religion, because all religions 
require obedience to an authority other than the 
worshiper himself. 

All this is not religion. New Thought might 
justly be called spiritual, however, because it 
teaches us to regard ourselves as essentially spirit 
and to give the first place to the spiritual nature 
with its needs and powers and possibilities of 
service, of achievement, and of blessedness. But 
the identification of your spirit with God robs 
the word religion of all meaning. 

New Thought, then, is not a religion and is 
not religious so long as it wears the guise of 
pantheistic monism. But whenever it appears as 
pluralism, as it does at any moment without the 



NEW THOUGHT AND RELIGION 139 

slightest warning, then it is practically a religion. 
For such a wide chasm separates the infinite spirit 
on the one side from the individual, personal, 
erring, weak, "mortal" mind on the other side, 
that two distinct beings are virtually involved. 
A New Thoughtist may proclaim from the house- 
tops his own infinity, his identity with God, his 
oneness with the All, yet as soon as he begins to 
talk about the mind we are listening to a very 
different story, to the life-history of a very differ- 
ent being. Between the two* stools of monism 
and pluralism the New Thought philosophy comes 
to the ground. 

Much the same metaphysical and moral attri- 
butes which the Christian ascribes to God the 
New Thoughtist ascribes to his real self. The 
same weakness, ignorance, and sinfulness which 
the Christian affirms of himself the New Thought- 
ist (though the view of sin is extremely shallow) 
attributes to his "mind." And just as the Chris- 
tian regards the infinitely holy and loving God 
as sustaining the relation of authority and provi- 
dence, and love, and power to sinning men, so the 
New Thoughtist posits much the same relation 
between his real self and his mind. 

Practically, therefore. New Thought in its un- 
guarded pluralistic moments and moods is reli- 
gious. But as a religion it is immeasurably in- 
ferior to Christianity. This is true because, in 
addition to other reasons, it does not hold firmly 
to the essential distinction between God and man. 



140 NEW THOUGHT 

Even when unwittingly a pluralist, the New 
Thought disciple is largely influenced by him- 
self as monist. By his fundamental identification 
of the sinner with the holy God, the enormity of 
sin and its guilt is obscured, the idea of real 
moral authority and government is nullified, the 
voice of conscience proclaiming ill desert and 
penalty therefor is weakened, knowledge alone 
instead of both knowledge and moral power is 
the supreme need, the highest love, that of one 
person for another, is excluded, and the heart- 
stirring, conscience-rousing, soul-winning love of 
God in Christ for men is a chimera. The high- 
est moral sanctions are lacking and also the 
genuine religious experience of the Christian type 
which is the mightiest moral dynamic. 

We may now touch upon the attitude of New 
Thought to Christianity, to the Church, and to 
the Bible. We are told that the real Christianity 
has never been tried. But at last the hour has 
struck, the fullness of time has come, and Chris- 
tianity appareled as New Thought comes riding 
in the chariot of the sun to illumine, cleanse, and 
beautify the world. So-called Christianity is a 
degenerate and a pervert. It has entirely mis- 
understood the mission of Jesus as he understood 
and proclaimed it. Men perverted his religion 
into a religion of dogma and of institutions. In 
its primitive period, before it became dogmatic 
and institutional, Christianity was vital and ef- 
fective, but it soon lost its life and power. It 



NEW THOUGHT AND RELIGION 141 

needs revitalizing. It needs to become incompar- 
ably more spiritual than it is. To this end it 
must be delivered from the thraldom of dogma, it 
must be removed from its intellectual and his- 
torical foundation, above all it must be rescued 
from sectarianism. 

New Thought poses as the savior of Chris- 
tianity. It proposes to save the Christian reli- 
gion by offering itself as the only genuine Chris- 
tianity. It claims that all its leading princi- 
ples are to be found in the New Testament. It 
affirms that its ideas constitute the substance 
and essence of biblical Christianity. 

Sometimes New Thought leaders say biting 
things about the Church and about the doctrines 
held by most Christians. Usually, however, there 
is no bitterness and no call to arms. The an- 
tagonism takes the form of what is suspiciously 
like a supercilious assumption of superiority. 
Sometimes they talk in a condescendingly be- 
nevolent and patronizing manner : The Church is 
not to be directly opposed but should rather be 
tolerated. The Churches, including even their 
denominationalism, are useful as a lower stage 
of religious development. The fact that they 
exist shows that they were needed; for nothing 
arises unless it is necessary and desirable; evolu- 
tion reigns, and the series is an ascending one. 
(What now about Christianity's fall from its 
pristine purity?) 

It would be unreasonable, therefore, to attack 



142 NEW THOUGHT 

the Church and its dogmas and institutions and 
denominationalism and unspirituality. To do so 
would be foolish also because resistance would 
only entrench this degenerate Christianity more 
deeply in the life of the world. That which is 
erroneous and wrong and harmful cannot be over- 
come and displaced by resistance, but only by 
love. Just as you must love a disease if you 
would extirpate it, so you must love the Church 
and its dogmas if you wish to see New Thought 
take the place of the Church and of "dogmatic 
Christianity." Let us cultivate a oneness of 
spirit with all the intellectual, external, formal, 
dry-as-dust systems of religion, and they will 
become our friends instead of our enemies. They 
will become so friendly, indeed, as to please us 
by disappearing from the face of the earth. We 
will love them into annihilation. Could one find 
a more striking example of suaviter in modo, 
fortiter in re? 

New Thought is respectful to the Bible and 
often enthusiastic in praise of the grand, old 
Book. It claims to be in agreement with the 
Scriptures. The Bible is to it the greatest eth- 
ical and spiritual book in the world. It records 
the experiences and utterances of many of the 
greatest "practical idealists" in history. Par- 
ticularly it presents to us the supreme ideal- 
ist, Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible is the 
supreme book-revelation of God the real 
man. New Thought writers frequently quote 



NEW THOUGHT AND RELIGION 143 

from the Bible. But they throw all sober 
principles of interpretation to the winds. 
They utterly despise the interpretations of Chris- 
tian scholarship. They believe that what is 
known in the Christian world as scientific inter- 
pretation leads men astray, positively disqualify- 
ing them for a correct understanding of the 
Scriptures. For spiritual things are spiritually 
discerned. To interpret Scripture as one would 
ordinarily interpret human language is to be 
carnal ; it is to bring the Bible down to the gross 
"objective plane," although it was produced upon 
the high and spiritual "subjective plane." New 
Thought seers look below the surface of Scripture 
and see the deeper meaning, the meaning that is 
"real." The results of this penetrative insight 
are often most surprising to men of common clay 
like biblical scholars and Christian commentators. 
Helpful, however, as the Bible is and highly to 
be prized, it is only one of many bibles ; and 
anyway the chief source of knowledge is the in- 
ner light and the inner voice. The Christ 
within, the real man, your own real self is the 
light that is all-sufficient. 

There is no need to lengthen this book by dis- 
cussing the attitude of New Thought to Chris- 
tianity, its creeds, its institutions, and its Bible. 
Information concerning that attitude is all the 
reader needs. Having received it, he is intelli- 
gent enough to form his own judgment and to 
take his own stand in respect to New Thought. 



i 



144 NEW THOUGHT 

It is not within the province of this book to 
espouse any particular philosophy and champion 
any views as to the nature of ultimate reality, 
of the relation of the infinite to the finite, of 
mind to matter, of spirit to body, of the nature 
of subconsciousness, or to discuss ethical theory, 
or the concept of law, or the theory of evolution. 
The sole object of this book is to tell what New 
Thought has to say on these weighty themes and 
to judge of its value from the standpoint of self- 
consistency, intelligibility, and practicality. 

In the judgment of the present writer the 
handwriting of Truth upon the wall of New 
Thought would be: Thou art weighed in the 
balances and art found wanting. Not that it 
does not contain much precious truth or does not 
impart incalculable benefit to many of its vota- 
ries or is not a powerful ally of Christianity 
against materialism and worldliness. 

New Thought is exposed to just censure rather 
because it propounds as a new philosophy of life 
a medley of ancient and, in important particu- 
lars, incongruous ideas, undigested and unassimi- 
lated, ideas whose mutual relations its sponsors 
do not discern and whose logical implications 
and consequences they do not perceive. 

The head and front of New Thought's offend- 
ing, however, is not that it mishandles noble ideas 
but that it offers its fundamentally self-con- 
tradicting philosophy as the basis for practical 
living and as the determining factor in the great- 



NEW THOUGHT AND RELIGION 145 

est issues of life, and as the superior of and sub- 
stitute for the Christian morality and the Chris- 
tian religion. 

New Thought contains truth and does good; 
nevertheless it is a menace. It is the good that 
is the enemy of the best. To say nothing about 
the possibilities of harm as well as of benefit in 
the sphere of therapeutics, it is not safe to let 
loose upon the world for practical application 
the idea that the real Jesus and the real Judas 
are absolutely identical, that there is no essential 
difference between Paul and Nero, between St. 
Francis of Assisi and Caesar Borgia, between 
the Virgin Mary and Herodias. The Christian 
does not believe that the vile purlieus of vice are 
the chosen abodes of Deity, that dens of infamy 
are courts of heaven, that the brothel is one of the 
rooms in the palace of the King. While hardly 
any New Thought writer would be brazen enough 
to put his doctrine in this terrible form, that is 
exactly what his doctrine amounts to. 

Moral evil is regarded leniently, blandly, plac- 
idly. It is treated as mere ignorance; past 
evil is not to be regretted; penitent sorrow is 
frowned upon. Moral evil is the upward path to 
perfection. And the climax in this series of in- 
dulgences to the sinner is that there is no such 
thing as real evil, evil only seems to be bad. All 
is One and One is All, and the All-One is the All- 
Good. 

Any philosophy or religion proclaimed as the 



/ 



146 NEW THOUGHT 

guide of life must be judged chiefly by its ethics 
and by its moral tendencies and moral influence. 
Christians cannot but believe that to quote the 
Bible in support of the outrageous ethics de- 
scribed above and in the preceding chapter and 
to cite Jesus as the supreme example of what New 
Thought stands for is nothing less than "to steal 
the livery of heaven to serve the devil in." If 
Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life," then 
New Thought, notwithstanding all its truth and 
beneficence, is either as ethics or as religion, to 
a serious extent false and pernicious. 



APPENDIX 

A few suggestions for the study of New 
Thought may be welcome. A man is not 
equipped for its study unless he has had some 
training in psychology and is acquainted with the 
history of philosophy, although, lacking these 
qualifications, extra hard-headed common sense 
will go a long way. 

Before reading books that belong strictly to 
New Thought, it would be well to peruse "The 
Law of Psychic Phenomena," by T. J. Hudson 
(A. C. McClurg & Co.), and if possible, to 
read extensively in F. W. H. Myers' monumental 
work, "Human Personality." The perusal of 
"Psychotherapy," by Hugo Miinsterberg (Mof- 
fat, Yard & Co.), a book by a scientific psy- 
chologist, could be read with profit both before 
the study of New Thought books and also sub- 
sequently to the reading of a dozen of them. 

Coming to New Thought books in the strictest 
sense one might well begin with an excellent work 
by Henry Wood, "The New Thought Simplified" 
(Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard Company). It 
would perhaps be best to follow this by R. W. 
Trine's charming book, "In Tune with the In- 
finite" (T. Y. Crowell & Co.). Then to see to 
what lengths New Thought can really go one 
147 



148 APPENDIX 

should read that amazing display of rhetorical 
pyrotechnics, "The Discovery of a Lost Trail," 
by Charles B. Newcomb (Lothrop, Lee, & Shep- 
ard Co.). Next one should read, in order to 
complete the foundation of his study of New 
Thought, the following three books : 

"The Mastery of Mind/' by Henry Frank, (R. 
F. Fenno & Co.). 

"The Philosophy of Self-Help/' by S. D. Kirk- 
ham, (G. P. Putnam's Sons). 

"Man and the Divine Order/' by EL W. Dresser, 
(G. P. Putnam's Sons). 

The student may now rove and browse at will 
in the pastures of New Thought literature. A 
short list of books is appended : 

"Mental Healing," by L. E. Whipple, (The Meta- 
physical Publishing Co., New York). 

"The Will to be Well," by C. B. Patterson, (Funk 
& Wagnalls Co.). 

"Studies in the Thought World," by Henry Wood, 
(Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.). 

"Nerves in Disorder," by A. T. Schofield, (Mof- 
fat, Yard & Co.). 

"Mind Power and Privileges," by A. B. Olston, 
(T. Y. Crowell & Co.). 

"Paths to the Heights," by Sheldon Leavitt, (T. 
Y. Crowell & Co.). 

"What All the World's A-Seeking," by R. W. 
Trine, (T. Y. Crowell & Co.). 



APPENDIX 149 

"From Poverty to Power/' by James Allen, (R. 
F. Fenno& Co.). 

"Mind Power/' by W. W. Atkinson, (The Prog- 
ress Co., Chicago). 

The perusal of even these few books will 
familiarize the student of New Thought with its 
ideas, methods, ambitions, tone and temper. Of 
course if the reader wishes to pursue the matter 
still further, the number of New Thought books 
is large and is being constantly increased. 






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